c. 2005 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II, who devoted his life to serving God, spent his last days, hours and minutes seeking God in the serene knowledge that he was about to die, say those who were with him at the end.

The 84-year-old Roman Catholic pontiff died at 9:37 p.m. (2:37 p.m. EST) in his private apartment in the Apostolic Palace, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls announced.

In St. Peter's Square, directly below the pope's fourth floor windows, tens of thousands of people who had gathered to pray the rosary for him learned of his death from Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, the Argentine prelate who has often read papal homilies and messages when speaking was difficult for John Paul.

“The pope is dead. We all feel like orphans now,'' Sandri said.

Exactly an hour after the pope's death all the church bells in Rome began tolling. On Sunday, one of the bronze doors of the Apostolic Palace will remain closed in a sign of mourning.

Although he had become increasingly weak and frail in recent years, it was only two months ago that John Paul entered into what was to be his final illness, brought on by the flu and complicated by Parkinson's disease. He was hospitalized twice in February, but at the end he insisted on dying in the Renaissance palace in which he had lived for 26 years.

Those who saw him in his last days spoke of his great serenity. On the day before his death he asked to be read the Via Crucis, recalling Christ's Passion and death, and the Liturgy of the Third Hour, which begs for God's help and proclaims the risen Christ in prayer and psalms.

Navarro-Valls was moved by the way John Paul prepared to meet his death even though illness had left him virtually mute and struggling for breath. “Certainly it is an image that I have not seen in these 26 years: the pope lucid and extraordinarily serene,'' he said.

Cardinal Mario Francesco Pompedda, retired head of the Vatican's supreme court, visited the pope on Friday and described the scene in John Paul's bedroom to the newspaper La Repubblica.

“The pope's bed was almost in the middle of the large room, a large bed with a white cover. Everything was white. The pope was lying propped up on some cushions, turned a bit to his right side. Next to him were two doctors equipped with apparatus and medicine and in front, on two armchairs, a nun and his secretary,'' the prelate said.

John Paul's eyes were half closed, but he was not asleep, Pompedda said. “When my name was said, he opened his eyes. I am still caught by the beauty of (his) smiling look.''

The pope was unable to speak, the cardinal said, but “he spoke to me with that smiling and serene face.''

Somehow, John Paul did manage to make his thoughts known some hours later. With thousands of young people praying, singing and chanting his name in the square below, he sent a last message to the young.

“Last evening the pope probably had in mind the young people whom he has met throughout the world during his pontificate,'' Navarro-Valls said. “In fact, he seemed to be referring to them when, in his words, and repeated several times, he seemed to have said the following sentence: `I have looked for you. Now you have come to me. And I thank you.'''

But death came quietly and with dignity, and John Paul, the former archbishop of Krakow, was surrounded by fellow Poles.

“The Holy Father's final hours were marked by the uninterrupted prayer of all those who were assisting him in his pious death, and by the choral participation in prayer of the thousands of faithful who, for many hours, had been gathered in St. Peter's Square,'' Navarro-Valls said.

The pope's longtime secretary and friend, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, began celebrating the Mass for Divine Mercy Sunday at 8 p.m. (1 p.m. EST), the spokesman said. During the Mass, the Viaticum _ the Eucharist for the dying _ was administered to him, and he received the anointing of the sick.

Gathered around the first Polish pope in the history of the Church were Dziwisz; his other Polish secretary, Monsignor Mieczyslaw Mokrzycki; Cardinal Marian Jaworski, a Pole who is archbishop in Lviv in Ukraine; Archbishop Stanislaw Rylko, president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity; the Rev. Tadeusz Styczen, a longtime friend; and three Polish nuns of the order of the Handmaidens of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, who were his housekeepers, and their superior, Sister Robiana Sobodka.

The pope's personal physician, Renato Buzzonetti, was also there along with two other doctors treating the pope, Alessandro Barelli and Ciro D'Allo, and two nurses.

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The apparent tranquillity of John Paul's death was in sharp contrast to his suffering and the physical indignities he underwent in the days leading up to the final crisis.

On Feb. 24, surgeons inserted a tube in his throat to ease his breathing. When he awoke from the anesthesia, he wrote a note to them asking only partly in jest, “What have you done to me?''

John Paul had regained breath at the cost of speech _ after March 13 he was never able to utter more than a rasp in public. On Easter Sunday, he grimaced in frustration when he could not deliver the traditional “urbi et orbi'' blessing to 70,000 pilgrims in St. Peter's Square and a worldwide television audience.

On March 30, a feeding tube was inserted through the pope's nose to his stomach because he could no longer swallow his nourishment. There was talk of more surgery to place a permanent feeding tube in his stomach.

Immediately after John Paul died, a group of high Vatican officials arrived: Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state; Cardinal Eduardo Martinez Somalo, the camerlengo, or chamberlain, of the Holy Roman Church, who will take temporary charge of the church; Sandri, who is assistant secretary of state; and Archbishop Paolo Sardi, who will serve as Martinez Somalo's deputy. They were followed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, dean of the College of Cardinals, and Cardinal Jozef Tomko, retired secretary of the Synod of Bishops.

Navarro-Valls said the pope's body is expected to be moved to St. Peter's Basilica by Monday afternoon to lie in state, and the College of Cardinals will meet on Monday to decide the dates of his funeral and the opening of the conclave of cardinals that will elect his successor.

KRE/JM END POLK