Poland says its final goodbye to Pontiff

LIFE came to a standstill in John Paul II’s native Poland as the country paused to pay its last respects to the late Pope as his funeral was celebrated in Rome.

In Krakow, some 800,000 pilgrims gathered on Blonia esplanade, a vast field on the city’s periphery where the Pope celebrated mass for some three million people on his last visit to Poland in 2002, and fixed their gazes on specially erected giant screens showing live images from Rome.

After tolling bells and wailing sirens signalled the start of the ceremony, they and crowds gathered in towns, cities and villages around the country watched as John Paul II’s simple wooden coffin, adorned with a cross and the M for Mary, was brought into Saint Peter’s Square from the basilica of the same name and placed on a carpet on the ground in front of the altar.

“We want to be with other people,” said a young mother who had come to Blonia esplanade with her two children who were aged one and six.

“When I was four, I saw the pope for the first time in Warsaw in 1979. I was with him then and I am sure my children want to be here now,” she said.

John Paul II had close ties with Krakow, having studied in the former royal capital, been ordained as a priest there and served his first mass at the city’s Wawel Cathedral in 1946.

He was archbishop of Krakow from 1963 until he was elected Pope in 1978.

In the capital Warsaw, trams and buses and the few pedestrians in the streets stopped in their tracks at the start of the ceremony.

With Friday declared a national holiday for the funeral, shops, local and international schools, banks and even the busy Warsaw stock exchange were shut.

In Wadowice, where the Pope was born Karol Wojtyla on May 18, 1920, more than 20,000 people gathered to bid him adieu. The population of the southern town is less than the numbers that massed there on Friday.

Young and old filled the square outside Wadowice’s basilica of Our Lady to overflowing to watch the funeral of their most beloved and famous son, beamed from Rome onto a giant screen.

“I couldn’t go to Rome so I came here to accompany him on his last earthly voyage,” said Marcin Rak, 28, who had travelled from the city of Bielsko-Biala, 40 kilometres away, to be in the town imbued with the history of John Paul II on the day of his funeral.

“I think this town is even closer to the Pope than Krakow and I wanted to pay him homage here,” he said.

New Zealander Patricia Munroe had travelled to the southern Polish town from London to be in the place of John Paul II’s birth on the day he was taken to his final rest.

“The Pope belongs to all of Poland but this is where his heart is,” she said.

Near the basilica, an empty chair was draped with yellow and white colours of the Vatican and the black ribbon of mourning.

Sitting in that chair, John Paul II had bantered with inhabitants on his last visit to his birthplace in 1999.

Many Poles had chosen to watch the ceremony from home, where it was beamed live from Rome by Polish television.

Those who did venture outside sought the company of fellow mourners in places such as Blonia esplanade in Krakow, Wadowice or at Warsaw’s Pilsudski and Zamkowy squares where giant screens had been set up.

Some 30,000 gathered in Pilsudski Square, another place which marked one of the highpoints in John Paul II’s pontificate. There, on June 10, 1979 the Pope had uttered the memorable phrase: “May the spirit come down and renew the face of this land.”

Those words were interpreted by many in John Paul II’s native land as an exhortation to stand up to the oppressive communist regime and allow a new Poland to be born.

A fanfare, the toll of bells, wailing sirens and a 26-gun salute fired in central Pilsudski Square signalled the end of the service in Rome at 1.00 pm local time.