NEWS STORY: Globe-trotting Pope Gathered the World for His Funeral

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) On Wednesday (April 6), President Bush knelt in prayer after viewing the remains of John Paul II at St. Peter’s Basilica. On Friday, he became the first American president to attend a papal funeral. Prince Charles postponed his wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles so he could pay his respects. […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) On Wednesday (April 6), President Bush knelt in prayer after viewing the remains of John Paul II at St. Peter’s Basilica. On Friday, he became the first American president to attend a papal funeral.

Prince Charles postponed his wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles so he could pay his respects. That also allowed British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to attend both events.


In Cuba, Fidel Castro declared three days of mourning for the world spiritual leader most credited with the demise of communism in Eastern Europe.

World leaders responded to John Paul’s death with an unprecedented show of respect for a religious figure _ a man like no pope before him, the pope who took his papacy to the world.

Spain’s King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia. Mexican President Vicente Fox. French President Jacques Chirac. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Jordan’s King Abdullah II.

The list of more than 200 world dignitaries attending the event reached such historic proportions that Bush had no choice but to attend, said Doris Donnelly, director of the Cardinal Suenens Program in Theology and Church Life at John Carroll University in Cleveland.

“The cast of people attending this funeral is a who’s who of the world,” she said.

John Paul was the most traveled pope in history, making more than 100 trips outside the Vatican, from Nairobi to Warsaw and Havana to Charleston, S.C. His travels took on the trappings of national holidays in many countries, and his trips to places such as his native Poland, Cuba, the Middle East and the United States made the front pages of newspapers throughout the world.

And now, the world remembers John Paul.

The images were striking _ as many as 18,000 people per hour filed past the crimson-clad body of the pope in nearly round-the-clock viewing inside St. Peter’s Basilica.


Two hundred thousand people gathered for an outdoor Mass in Warsaw in his native Poland, where John Paul’s early and frequent courageous cries for political and religious freedom awakened an unstoppable movement for democracy.

Several thousand youths remained until late in the night, placing candles on the ground to form a giant cross of light.

In a historic 1998 visit, John Paul pleaded for Cuba to open itself up to the world and for the world to open itself up to Cuba.

This week, in a scene unimaginable before the papal visit, Castro was among thousands filling the towering Havana Cathedral and an adjacent plaza at a Mass in the pontiff’s honor.

“Rest in peace, tireless fighter for friendship among peoples, enemy of war and friend of the poor,” the Cuban leader wrote in a condolence book at the Vatican’s mission in Havana.

In the United States, John Paul was a religious figure too big for any politician to ignore.


There was some infighting among members of Congress over who would be part of the U.S. delegation that included the president, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, Republican majority leader.

John Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron in Ohio, said President Bush’s decision to attend the funeral “could be characterized as a no-brainer from a political perspective.”

But, Green said, in addition to the president’s courting of Catholic voters, Bush had genuine affection for John Paul and the late pope was a true international figure demanding of presidential attention.

“In a sense,” Green said, “this guy was a giant in terms of international relations.”

Add to the international stature of the pope the dramatic media coverage of the pope’s final days, and the result was such an outpouring of sympathy and emotion that the Friday rites transcended the traditional papal funeral, some observers said.

“The media’s focus and reverent attention to all of this made of this significant event an even greater event, an historic event,” Donnelly said.


“People want to be a part of history.”

KRE/PH END BRIGGS

(David Briggs is religion reporter for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland.)

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