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.