c. 2005 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ The lump came into my throat at the last turning of the staircase.

The pope was dead, and we were going to see his body lying in state.

On Sunday (April 3), dignitaries of church and state, led by Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, viewed the pope’s body. On Monday, it was the turn of the 3,000 current and retired Vatican employees, their families and _ almost as an afterthought _ reporters accredited to the Vatican press room.

As we inched up the marble steps of the Scala Nobile in a dense but well-behaved, wall-to-wall crowd, the idea of the papal death was still an abstraction, a news story, not an emotion.

We turned the corner, and ahead of us was the final flight of stairs leading directly to the Sala Clementina, the audience hall named for Pope Clement VIII, who reigned from 1592 to 1605. He commissioned lavish frescoes by the brothers Giovanni and Cherubino Alberti and precious marble paneling.

Somewhere close by, perhaps in the hall itself, people were reciting the rosary. At the end of the prayer they sang the “Salve Regina.” The woman in the black lace mantilla behind me joined in.

John Paul lay on a catafalque covered in gold brocade. His miter was white and his vestments deep red, the mourning color for popes. He wore dark red slippers, and a rosary was laced through the fingers of his clasped hands.

The pope’s face had the waxy cast of death, but his facial muscles were no longer frozen by Parkinson’s disease. He looked ravaged by illness, but his expression was serene.

We came forward one by one and moved slowly past the catafalque. Almost everyone genuflected and made the sign of the cross. An English prelate, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, was praying at a kneeler to the pope’s right. A cardinal I didn’t recognize knelt near Fitzgerald.

Behind the catafalque was an honor guard of two Swiss Guards in their red, yellow and blue striped Renaissance uniforms, an Easter candle and a crucifix. It was quiet and reverent _ and real. The pope was dead. John Paul II was the only pope I could say I almost knew.

I have been writing about the Polish pope for 21 years of his 26-year reign. Like other reporters who traveled with him, I had a chance to speak to him at the informal press conferences he would give on the plane taking us to destinations halfway around the world.

On my first papal flight I was so awed at having the Roman Catholic pontiff standing beside me waiting for my question that I couldn’t think of anything to ask. He smiled, patted my hand and moved on.

Although I didn’t agree with all of his pronouncements, I couldn’t help but admire his defense of human rights, his dedication to the pursuit of world peace and his memorable declaration that the collapse of communism was not a vindication of capitalism.

I’m not alone in my admiration.

Some 2 million people are expected to file past the pope’s body in St. Peter’s Basilica prior to Friday’s funeral.

He was their pope.

KRE/PH END POLK