Chapter Two

THE FUNERAL EFFECT

John Paul II was a magnet for humanity. According to most estimates, he was seen in the flesh by more people than any other human being who ever lived. He regularly drew millions when he traveled, including the 4.5 to 5 million people in Manila in 1995 for World Youth Day, and the 10 million who turned out in Mexico City in 1979. The only events that compare are the Hindu Kumbh Mela festival of January 2001, when 10 million people bathed in the Ganges River over twenty-four hours, and the funeral of Ayatollah Khomeni in June 1989, which drew 3 to 10 million. Yet these are one-off affairs; John Paul drew such crowds on a regular basis, so much so that anything less than a million for a papal Mass was styled by the press as a disappointment. Even the great Christian crusader Billy Graham doesn’t have this kind of drawing power.

For that reason, it was no particular surprise that lots of people would turn out to pay respects to John Paul as his body lay in state in St. Peter’s Basilica, or to attend the funeral Mass in St. Peter’s Square on Friday, April 8. It was equally no surprise that these events drew massive television audiences worldwide, which was why networks from every language and continent flew in their most important anchors to host the coverage, and why they had paid top-dollar for Roman rooftop locations for the last several years. The surprise was rather in how many came— by some estimates, as many as 5 million during the week from the Pope’s death through his funeral—and how raw and deep their emotions were. The outpouring of grief and love for John Paul literally flooded the streets of Rome for the better part of a week, jolting even the world-weary Romans, who pride themselves on having seen it all before.

The surprise was that the events surrounding his death and funeral would be not just a major civic event and television extravaganza, but that they would become a critically important factor in the politics leading up to the selection of John Paul II’s successor. In some cases for the first time, the cardinals became aware during that week that they were not just electing a leader of the Roman Catholic Church, they were electing a man who would be humanity’s most important voice of conscience, a major player in global affairs. They became more conscious than ever before that they had to find a man of stature, who could command the respect and attention of the entire world. For that reason, a “Luciani solution,” referring to the first conclave of 1978 and the election of Cardinal Albino Luciani of Venice as John Paul I, a simple, smiling man whom no one would mistake for a visionary, seemed out of the question. The massive international reaction to John Paul’s death drove home to the cardinals the revolution he had worked in terms of the global standing of the office, and thereby reshaped the politics of the election of his successor. They had to find a pope of substance, someone who could withstand the withering comparison to John Paul II.

It’s that political impact that observers have come to call the “funeral effect.”

BACKGROUND: GRUMBLING ABOUT A POPE AD EXTRA

Prior to John Paul’s death and funeral, it was by no means certain that a towering personality is what some cardinals were looking for in his successor.

When the College of Cardinals gathers to elect a new pope, part of the exercise is to take stock of the pontificate that’s just ended, trying to assess both its strengths and its weaknesses. The choice of a successor is, to some extent, conditioned by the desire to find a man who can remedy those weaknesses and address the previous pope’s unfinished business. For that reason, in an attempt to garner clues about what kind of man they’d be looking for in a successor, journalists had spent the last several years asking cardinals how they weighed the pluses and minuses of the pontificate of John Paul II.

Unsurprisingly, the list of positives most cardinals adduced was extensive. He was a magnificent evangelist and apostle, most cardinals said, making 104 trips outside Italy to 129 nations, revitalizing the role of the pope as the successor not just of Peter but also, in a sense, of Paul, the peripatetic apostle who brought the Gospel to the world. John Paul, they said, was a superb pastor, inspiring faith and devotion everywhere he went, especially among the young. There is an entire generation of “John Paul II” priests in the Catholic Church today, many of whom had their first stirrings about a vocation when taking part in one of the World Youth Days, those massive gatherings of Catholic youth instituted by John Paul and sometimes dubbed a “Catholic Woodstock.” This was also a pope of historic outreach, revolutionizing the Church’s relationship with the Jews, with Muslims, and with other Christian denominations. He was a teacher, a mystic, and a man of deep and constant prayer, whose example of self-giving love will live in the memories of a whole generation of Catholics.

And yet . . . and yet, many cardinals said, all these gifts came at a price. There was a certain inattention to the nuts and bolts of ecclesiastical governance on John Paul’s watch, a sense that this pope’s passion was so directed ad extra, meaning outside the Church, that sometimes routine business ad intra, or inside the Church, suffered. Evidence included the occasional dysfunction of Vatican offices, with one curial agency saying one thing and another contradicting it, with no visible consequences from the Pope. This polyphonic disarray was evident in matters large and small, from what exactly the Vatican thought about the Iraq war, where every day it seemed another Vatican official offered an opinion, with the routine disclaimer that he was speaking “only for himself, ” to the tawdry spectacle of what the Pope did or did not say about the Mel Gibson movie The Passion of the Christ. This neglect of internal administration, some cardinals said, was also reflected in the occasionally low quality of episcopal appointments over the last twenty-six years, as well as the slow and ambiguous response from Rome to the sexual abuse crisis in the United States. In that sense, some cardinals said quietly, management had suffered under John Paul. Moreover, some of the same cardinals objected to what they saw as the “personalization” of the papacy under John Paul, the rock star qualities of the man, the mega-events in St. Peter’s Square, and the highly choreographed travels, which seemed sometimes to put the focus on the messenger rather than the message. The risk was that John Paul’s teaching came to be seen as an extension of his personality, something that depended on him, rather than the long and constant tradition of the Church.

This was not just the opinion of conservative cranks who never adapted to their loss of control over the papacy. Even cardinals sometimes perceived as more liberal shared the concern. On the eve of John Paul’s funeral, for example, Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Belgium told me in an interview granted on the condition that it be published after the conclave, “The Pope’s charism was an openness ad extra. He was never preoccupied by what was going on in Rome. It was just never his cup of tea.”

In the ruminations of some cardinals prior to the death of John Paul II, some had thought that perhaps a less charismatic figure, one who would travel less, engage in fewer spectacles, and stay behind his desk and govern more, would be appropriate as his successor. For that reason, a somewhat less dramatic, less theatrical, less ubiquitous pope, someone less given to public relations and imaginative gestures, might be what the Church needed after such a whirlwind of a pontificate. From this point of view, it was not important to elect another giant; a competent administrator and good-hearted man would be enough. By no means did every cardinal feel this way, but some came to Rome thinking that it might be healthy for the Church to avoid aggressive leadership for at least a brief period, in order to take stock and sort through John Paul’s legacy.

Then John Paul II died, and the cardinals watched what happened next.

LYING IN STATE

When word of John Paul’s death broke, there was already a large crowd in St. Peter’s Square that had just finished praying a rosary on behalf of the Pope. “We all feel like orphans this evening,” Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, the sostituto, or “substitute,” told the tens of thousands of people who were on hand as soon as official word came of John Paul’s death.

The body of Pope John Paul II was dressed in his vestments and moved to the Sala Clementina, on the third level of the Apostolic Palace, on Sunday, April 3. The Sala Clementina is a large reception room often used for semi-public and private audiences with various groups. It was in this room, for example, on June 4, 2004, that President George W. Bush presented John Paul II with the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor bestowed by the American government.

The Pope’s body was laid on a sloped bed and propped on a stack of three gold pillows. Near it were a wooden crucifix and a paschal candle symbolic of Jesus Christ as the light of the world in the face of darkness and death. His body was watched over by the Swiss Guard. During a period of private visitation during the day of April 3 and the morning of April 4, Vatican officials, a contingent of officials from the Italian government, journalists, and other select groups viewed the body.

On April 4, the body was moved onto a red velvet bier, with his head propped on three red pillows. The Papal Gentlemen, regaled in black morning coats and white gloves, were consecrated as pallbearers and stood alongside the Pope. Spanish Cardinal Martínez Somalo, the Camerlengo, who ruled the Church during the interregnum dressed in red and gold vestments, officiated at the sprinkling rite. He blessed the Pope with the holy waters of baptism three times: to the right of the Pope, at his head, and then to his left. An acolyte then brought to the Camerlengo a censer and boat. Martínez Somalo incensed the Pope three times. A long procession was begun in order to transfer the body of Pope John Paul II from the Sala Clementina, through the colonnades of the Apostolic Palace, and into St. Peter’s Square. A procession of monks, priests, and bishops paced slowly toward St. Peter’s Basilica. The College of Cardinals, trailed by Ratzinger and Martínez Somalo, followed them. As the ritual proceeded, Gregorian chants were sung by several religious orders with the people responding to each verse with the ancient Greek prayer “Lord, have mercy,” or Kyrie eleison. The Litany of the Saints was sung. After each name of a martyr or saint was chanted, invoking his or her intercession between God and the people, participants in the procession sang the Latin words Ora pro eo, meaning “Pray for him.” That was a departure from the traditional “Pray for us,” or Ora pro nobis.

Estimates of up to 3 million people made the pilgrimage to Rome to see the Pope during this period. The number of mourners multiplied rapidly as the city’s population converged on the square, filling its oval contours with a sea of downcast faces and flickering candlelight. In the first twelve hours after the death of the Pope, Rome city officials estimated that some 500,000 people converged on the square, rivaling the largest crowds ever assembled there. Movement around the area of the Vatican became almost impossible, given the throngs of people who crowded every inch of space. Over the next several days, the crowd would be further swelled by pilgrims from every corner of the Catholic world, but above all from Poland, saying a final farewell to the country’s undeclared king. An estimated 1.5 million Poles converged on Rome for the funeral Mass alone.

John Paul’s departure had opened a void, and his followers were struggling to fill it, with a display of raw emotion that often startled even the mourners themselves. Prelates led the square in song and prayer with wavering voices, and the massive audience responded with tears, thousand-mile stares, and upward glances at the trio of illuminated windows, looming high above the scene, that marked the newly vacated papal apartment.

“Rome without the Pope isn’t Rome,” explained Barbara De Angelis, twenty-four, an anthropology major at Rome’s La Sapienza University.

Like many in the city, she had spent the day in the square, sifting through clusters of tourists and well-wishers, aiming to get the inside scoop on John Paul’s deterioration. Now she had her answer. “Breathe it in. It’s all over,” she said, surveying the scene.

Applause erupted from different ends of the square, a traditional gesture of Italian mourning. In an address from the Quirinale Palace, a former papal residence that now hosts the Italian president, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi reflected on how the late pontiff had “shaped our conscience.”

“Italy weeps for a father,” Ciampi said, expressing the sentiments of millions of Italians who had embraced this Polish pope.

Public mourning also found expression in a burst of late-night traffic that plugged the narrow byways around the Vatican. “Romans don’t follow the Pope, they live him,” observed Luis Gonzales, a native of Guatemala City, Guatemala, who moved to Rome forty years ago. Gonzales offered John Paul high marks for his performance as the bishop of Rome—a role that for many was affirmed minutes after his election when the polyglot pope addressed St. Peter’s Square in Italian, instructing the people of Rome to “correct me if I err.” Gonzales also praised the pontiff ’s subsequent acquisition of Romanesco, the local dialect.

Amid the crowds of arriving Romans, clumps of foreign tourists staked out their positions and dug in. Josh Rogers, twenty-one, of South Hadley, Massachusetts, sat in the square with his luggage, dumbstruck by the timing of John Paul’s death. “It’s my first trip to Rome, and the Pope is dead,” he said. “Now what happens?”

Throughout the night into the early morning, mourners lingered in the square lighting candles. And when day broke, patches of spilt candle wax caked the cobblestones. Sunday soccer and variety television, Italy’s other national pastimes, had both been canceled. At newsstands, Italy’s factional print media expressed a rare moment of unity. The communist newspaper Il Manifesto, a vocal critic of the Church, blew an unprecedented kiss to the pontiff with a banner headline that read “You don’t make another!”—a revision of the popular Roman saying that if “one pope dies, you make another.”

The morning after John Paul’s death, the weather warmed and shops selling religious objects bustled. The multitudes had returned, bearing flags, banners, and solemn expressions. Seasoned papal mourners noted the robust turnout and the crush of media coverage. “Everyone is watching us,” said Emma Costantini, seventy-seven. “But I’m used to it.” John Paul was her fifth pope. Graziano de Marinis, sixty-eight, was also mourning his fifth pope—the one he “knew best.” In his wallet he carried a photo taken in 1981 of John Paul kissing his then six-year-old son Marco during a visit to his local church. Marinis tucked a copy of Rome’s La Repubblica newspaper under his arm. The banner simply read “Addio Wojtyla.”

On Monday morning, April 4, I had the opportunity to be part of a group of journalists permanently accredited to the Vatican who were taken into the Sala Clementina to pay a final farewell. It was in many ways an anticlimactic experience, given that the Pope already looked artificial and waxen, not the man bursting with life and energy we all had known. For me, the only human touch was seeing John Paul wearing the same scuffed red shoes I had grown accustomed to seeing in the Vatican and on the road; it was a reminder of how much ground all of us had traveled with him, both metaphorically and physically.

When John Paul’s body was moved to St. Peter’s Basilica for public viewing on the afternoon of April 5, the real tidal wave of humanity began to gather force. Lines had begun forming at 8:45 a.m. Monday, even though the public viewing was not slated to begin until later that evening. Volunteer crowd controllers clad in neon ponchos locked arms at street intersections, slowing the flow of bodies to guard against trampling. Vatican officials announced that the basilica would remain open almost around the clock, closing only from 2:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. to allow clean-up and maintenance. The press of humanity was, at times, overwhelming.

“I can’t breathe,” Ellena Medori, a thirty-four-year-old accountant, yelled when the masses forced her up against a railing on Monday night.

The tension increased around 1:30 a.m., with the deadline looming for the basilica to close for three hours. Shouts went up from the crowd to keep it open so they could see the Pope, and officials eventually reduced the break to one hour, between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m. That news, however, did little to calm the emotional press on the street.

“They’re pushing again from behind,” Medori shouted.

Straining from behind was Mirco Sanzovini, twenty-two, a biology student at La Sapienza, who had come prepared for his estimated fivehour wait. He was two hours in and swigging espresso from a stainless-steel thermos. He had been cut off from his mother thirty minutes earlier when the crowd controllers locked him in. Others in line came with tambourines, guitars, and signs bearing the names of their parishes. The city of Rome, meanwhile, had positioned over a hundred ambulances brought in from all over Italy in case of emergencies, and a first-aid tent was erected just off St. Peter’s Square. Throughout this period, Rome’s civil authorities would get high marks for the efficiency and imagination with which they responded to the extraordinary events.

By the time the doors of St. Peter’s were closed for the last time Friday morning, some pilgrims had waited as much as sixteen hours just to spend a few fleeting seconds before John Paul’s body. Seen from above, the long lines of mourners looked like mighty streams, a sort of Tigris and Euphrates of humanity, washing into the square from the Via della Conciliazione, the broad avenue leading to St. Peter’s built by Mussolini, and from the side streets to the left and right. The crowd was a fascinating demographic mix of the elderly, some of them among the most faithful Roman Catholics of all, whose hearts were breaking at the loss of a pope who had been their moral compass for more than a quarter-century; young couples, drawn by a sense that this man, even in death, could somehow make a difference in their lives and the lives of their children, nudging them toward the good in a world where wrong choices lurk around every corner; and the young themselves, tens of thousands of them, driven by a deep awareness that this was their pope, a man who loved youth, who believed in youth, and who sacrificed for young people as few adult figures of any era ever have. Together, they formed an impromptu city within a city, braving the cold of below-average temperatures in sleeping bags, managing to maintain an air of reverence as Vatican loudspeakers repeatedly played hymns and litanies to the saints.

On CNN Tuesday night, one American pilgrim said he had come to join the line directly from Fiumicino Airport. He was still holding his luggage, and said he planned to sleep on the street, putting in as much time as it took for his opportunity to say good-bye. Mourners who fell ill were cared for by forty-two Red Cross doctors from the central Italian region of Emilia Romagna. They treated 180 persons in just the first twelve hours at a field hospital in the nearby Piazza Risorgimento, many of them young people who “arrived at the Vatican absolutely unprepared for waiting in line for this long,” said Dr. Enrico Sverzellati. Most were treated for dehydration, heatstroke, or chills caught at night, while many others fainted. Doctors reported that it was not just the physical ardor that caused some mourners to collapse, but also the fevered emotions that John Paul’s passing had generated.

Hundreds of priests in Rome made their way to St. Peter’s Square and environs in order to deliver pastoral care to the multitudes, hearing confessions, for example, around the clock. Many later described the experience as unforgettable, relating anecdotes of people who opened their hearts to a priest for the first time in decades, sometimes for the first time ever. Some priests said there were conversions to Catholicism in the crowd, as pilgrims from other Christian churches, from other faith traditions, and from no religious stance at all found themselves swept up in the mystery of the moment. Whether this fervor would endure is another question, but as a final tribute to the evangelizing capacity of John Paul’s papacy, it struck most observers as impressive.

None of this was lost on the cardinals who, in short order, would elect the new pope.

Each morning, the cardinals met in the new hall of the Synod of Bishops (as of Wednesday, April 6, 116 cardinals, including some of the over-eighty cardinals, took part in that morning’s session, meaning the vast majority of electors were already present, twelve days before the conclave would begin). In order to get to the Vatican, they had to drive or walk past these unending streams of people who had accepted great physical hardship and endless delays in order to make contact with John Paul II one last time. The cardinals had occasion to converse with the mourners, to hear them talk about the powerful affect John Paul’s teaching and example had on them. Cynics pointed out that many of these same people probably would not give up an hour later in the week to go to Sunday Mass. One Roman friend argued that if people really wanted to give up sixteen hours to do a good deed, they should visit a relative or help the poor. It was true so far as it goes, but to many cardinals such carping missed the point. They could not help but be impressed with the love and devotion the late Pope had inspired, however it translated into religious practice or more exacting standards of personal morality; even for those who had often followed the Pope in life, these scenes had a profound impact. Other cardinals, who had not been to a papal Mass or watched many of the large-scale events in St. Peter’s Square, were experiencing the John Paul II magic for the first time. Still others, whose memories of such phenomena had dimmed as the Pope became steadily less active in his final months, were reminded once more of the awesome charisma John Paul had possessed.

Another powerful factor shaping the cardinals’ consciousness was the around-the-clock media coverage these long lines were generating. Media outlets came to cover a funeral, and had planned to fill most of the time between the Pope’s death and the funeral Mass with canned packages exploring his life and legacy. To a great extent, however, the people themselves became the story. For an entire week, the mass media forgot about the sex abuse scandals, the latest legislation on gay marriage in Spain, and the vocations crisis in Roman Catholicism, and focused on a story line that Ratzinger would later crystallize into a catchphrase at his inaugural Mass: “The Church is alive!” Even for cardinals long accustomed to seeing their boss draw crowds, this spontaneous, utterly unorganized outpouring was a jolt. Almost to a man, they were stirred by what they saw in the streets of Rome, and then on television, over those days. They realized one last time that John Paul II had raised the public profile of the papacy to historic heights, and many concluded that there could be no going back on the precious resource such visibility afforded the Roman Catholic Church.

Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia, who spent years working at the Vatican and was in St. Peter’s Square for three other papal funerals, called the outpouring for John Paul the most dramatic he had ever witnessed.

“This is the fourth funeral for a pope that I personally participated in. I think this exceeds everything,” he said. “This is the most extraordinary thing that ever happened.”

During this period, I happened to bump into Cardinal Julian Herranz, one of the world’s two Opus Dei cardinals and someone I have interviewed extensively for my forthcoming book on Opus Dei. Herranz and his secretary were walking down the Via Paolo VI, near the Vatican, as I was on my way back from an appointment in the Jesuit headquarters just down the street. I asked Herranz, a man who has worked in the Roman Curia for forty-four years and who currently heads the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts, what he made of the vast crowds to see the Pope.

“It’s deeply moving,” he said. “It’s a sort of popular rebuttal to Hans Küng’s criticism of the Pope.” Herranz was referring to a lengthy article published in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera just before John Paul’s death, offering a detailed criticism of John Paul’s reign. Echoing the very phrase that Ratzinger would later invoke, Herranz said, “The Church is alive. Look at these young people, and you can see it on their faces . . . the Church lives.”

Such were the thoughts circulating in the minds of cardinals as they ruminated on the choices awaiting them when the conclave opened.

THE FUNERAL

Those thoughts gathered additional strength from the April 8 funeral Mass, attended by almost a million mourners in and around the Vatican and millions more at satellite locations in Rome and worldwide, making it one of the largest religious gatherings of modern times. World dignitaries, religious leaders, and throngs of the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square. Moreover, the ceremony was watched by hundreds of millions around the globe. Archbishop John Foley, an American who heads the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, held a briefing for broadcast journalists the day before, and referred to the event with a straight face as “possibly the most important broadcast in history.” In any other context, the comment might have seemed laughably hyperbolic; in this setting, however, no one seemed prepared to challenge Foley’s claim. By general consensus, it was the most-watched event in the history of television, taking into consideration its global audience of some 2 billion people.

Formally known as a Mass of Requiem, the event began with the doors of St. Peter’s Basilica locked and dignitaries asked to stand outside the Church. Only the College of Cardinals and the patriarchs of the Eastern Rite were allowed inside for a private ceremony, in which Pope John Paul II was placed in a cypress coffin, the first of three. Before the Pope was laid in the coffins, Dziwisz had the honor of placing a white silk veil over the face of the Pope. Along with the body was a sealed document, a eulogy detailing the life and works of Pope John Paul II. Three bags, each containing one gold, silver, or copper coin for each year in Pope John Paul II’s reign, were placed beside the body—the only monetary compensation he received for his service as pope.

After the private ceremony, the doors were opened while the dignitaries were seated. Ratzinger and his 164 concelebrant cardinals prepared for a procession from inside the basilica to a marble apron in the middle of the square, where the Mass was to be held. The procession began with the introductory hymn, “Eternal Rest Grant Him, O Lord,” followed by Psalm 64, “To You We Owe Our Hymn of Praise, O God of Zion.” Borne on the shoulders of the Papal Gentlemen, the coffin, with Pope John Paul II’s coat of arms burned into the lid, was carried into St. Peter’s Square. An acolyte holding a red leather-bound Book of the Gospel preceded the coffin, while the Papal Gentlemen laid the coffin on a red carpet directly in front of the altar.

During the singing of the processional hymns, Ratzinger and his concelebrants removed their miters and bowed to kiss the altar. The concelebrants then placed their miters back on their heads and took their positions at two lines of gold chairs, similar to thrones. The altar was then blessed and incensed. When the songs ended, Ratzinger recited a prayer for Pope John Paul II. The congregants offered a prayer of confession and then sang Kyrie eleison, which had also been sung during the transferal of the Pope’s body from the Apostolic Palace to St. Peter’s Basilica.

The Liturgy of the Word followed. A first reading taken from the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 10, was read in Spanish. Psalm 22 was sung. The second reading was read in English, taken from the Letters of Saint Paul to the Philippians. Later, the Book of the Gospels was carried by an English deacon, Paul Moss, to the ambo (pulpit). The reading came from the Gospel of John, stating, “For this is the will of my father that everyone who sees the son and believes in him may have eternal life.” Moss then chanted John’s account of a dialogue between Jesus and Saint Peter. Jesus asked three times, “Do you love me?” He then told his disciple, “Follow me.”

At the conclusion of the Mass, Ratzinger led the Rite of Final Commendation and Farewell. He asked the College of Cardinals and patriarchs of the Eastern Rite to converge on the casket of Pope John Paul II. The congregants were called to prayer.

“Dear brothers and sisters, let us entrust to the most gentle mercy of God, the soul of our Pope John Paul II,” he read out. “May the Blessed Virgin Mary . . . intercede with God so that he might show the face of his blessed Son to our Pope, and console the Church with the light of the resurrection.”

The choir sang the Litany of the Saints. In a final break with tradition in John Paul’s papacy, names of the saints canonized by Pope John Paul II, such as St. Maria Faustina and St. Josemaría Escrivá, were included. After the Litany of the Saints, the patriarchs, archbishops, and metropolitans of the Eastern Rite approached the coffin of Pope John Paul II for their own rituals of commendation and farewell. They incensed the casket and led each other into prayer. Together with the College of Cardinals and patriarchs of the Eastern Rite, they all witnessed the sprinkling of the casket with the waters used in the sacrament of baptism. Incense was used once again. The liturgy of the Eastern Rite was conducted in Greek.

The Mass of Requiem was officially ended with congregants standing, singing the words, “May the angels accompany you into heaven, may the martyrs welcome you when you arrive, and lead you to Holy Jerusalem.”

The Papal Gentlemen then carried the coffin of Pope John Paul II for interment, with the rite led by Martínez Somalo. As is customary, John Paul II was entombed in three nested coffins. The cypress coffin was sealed and tied with three red silk ribbons. It was then lowered into a larger solid zinc casket, which was soldered shut. This was adorned with three bronze plaques: a simple cross at the head of the coffin, a plaque with the Pope’s name and dates of birth and death at the center, and Pope John Paul II’s personal coat of arms at the foot. The zinc casket was finally lowered into a larger walnut casket, bearing three identical plaques, which was shut with nails of pure gold. Pallbearers took the unified coffin through the “Door of Death” on the left side of the altar of St. Peter’s Basilica. At that point a single bell tolled. The pallbearers took the coffin down the stairs near the statue of St. Longinus at the base of the canopy of Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The coffin was lowered into the ground, as the Pope requested, and covered with a plain stone slab featuring his name and birth and death dates. Martínez Somalo ended the Rite of Interment with the words, “Lord, grant him eternal rest, and may perpetual light shine upon him.” Those present sang Salve Regina, “Hail, Holy Queen.”

The funeral itself was a masterpiece of symbolism. Following in the tradition of Paul VI, an opened book of the Gospels was placed on the coffin lid—its pages turned by the breeze as the funeral progressed. By the end, the book actually laid closed on the casket, seeming to symbolize the closing of John Paul’s earthly life. Behind the casket, the College of Cardinals sat clad in crimson robes, which according to Roman Catholic tradition symbolizes the blood of Jesus Christ. Other church leaders sat to the right of John Paul II in white vestments.

Opposite them sat an audience of equal proportion that included kings, queens, presidents, and prime ministers from the secular world, most of whom dressed in black. Kofi Anan, secretary-general of the United Nations, was among the first to arrive.

Prominent personalities arrived a few at a time, including German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Ukrainian president Victor Yushenko, Afghan president Hamid Karzai, then French president Jacques Chirac, King Abdullah of Jordan, and the Spanish royals along with Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. After them arrived Brazilian president Lula and his wife. Tony Blair and Prince Charles, who postponed his wedding with Camilla Parker Bowles for Saturday in order to attend the Pope’s funeral, also filed in. (As a British footnote, the event marked the first time that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the future monarch, and the prime minister all attended the funeral of a pope together.) Among the last to arrive because of protocol and security reasons were U.S. president George W. Bush, his father and former president George Bush Sr., former president Bill Clinton, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The congregation, which included Syrian president Bashar Assad and Israeli president Moshe Katzav, sometimes made strange bedfellows. Reports later circulated that Assad and Katzav shook hands during the Rite of Peace in the Mass, which Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Atlanta, speaking on CNN, later dubbed “John Paul’s first miracle.” The dignitaries also included 142 leaders of non-Christian religions, testimony to John Paul’s persistent and genuine outreach to the other religions of the human family.

Over 10,000 police and soldiers monitored security for the Mass, with 1,430 officers assigned specifically to the heads of state and other dignitaries. A flight ban was in effect to prevent security threats from the air—private light aircraft were not allowed within a thirty-five-mile radius of the center of Rome until Saturday afternoon. Italian air force jets were on standby to intercept intruders, and helicopters were put on “slow mover interceptor” mode in order to head off attacks by small aircraft. Security measures were also adopted to cope with a range of other threats, including attacks from biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. Antiaircraft missile batteries were put in place in several locations in and around the Italian capital. All these precautions testified to the extraordinary nature of the event; never before had so many heads of state and other VIPs, representing such diverse backgrounds and political outlooks, gathered to mourn one man’s passing. It was dramatic visual testimony to the moral, and also political, capital accumulated by John Paul II during his almost twenty-seven-year reign.

As the funeral came to a close, applause erupted throughout the square and resounded through the throng that filled Via della Conciliazione, the main avenue leading to St. Peter’s Square. It continued for seven minutes. The crowd also repeatedly erupted into the rhythmic chants of Giovanni Paolo! Giovanni Paolo!, so often associated with events in St. Peter’s Square and elsewhere. Faithful who could not attend the Mass filled the fields of Tor Vergata, the site where John Paul II held one of the largest rallies of his papacy on World Youth Day in 2000. The funeral was simultaneously followed around the world in places as diverse as the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk and Tokyo, Japan. Rome itself groaned under the weight of visitors. Side streets were clogged in a permanent pedestrian rush hour, mostly by kids with back-packs. Tent camps sprang up at the Circus Maximus and elsewhere around the city to take the spillover from hotels. Hawkers jacked up prices of everything from bottled water to papal trinkets.

On the eve of the funeral, the Vatican released John Paul’s last will and testament, penned in Polish over twenty-two years beginning five months after his election in October 1978. In it, he said he wanted to be buried “in the bare Earth” and have prayers and Masses celebrated after his death. The Pope had revised his thinking about his burial spot over the years, initially asking the College of Cardinals to accede to requests from Poland for burial there, then eventually leaving the matter entirely in their hands. John Paul’s body was thus eventually laid to rest in the grotto beneath the main floor of St. Peter’s Basilica, in the spot vacated by Pope John XXIII after his beatification in 2000. John Paul’s remains are marked by a simple white tombstone with the dates of his pontificate. As soon as the Vatican reopened St. Peter’s Basilica after the funeral Mass, it, too, became a magnet for pilgrims. Even during the two-day conclave, the long lines of people waiting to visit the Pope’s resting place never abated.

THE HOMILY

Against this backdrop, Ratzinger’s homily rapidly evolved from a mere funeral speech into a turning point in the history of the Church. It began with Ratzinger standing before the congregants, his reading glasses perched on his nose, speaking in flawless Italian, greeting the political figures and religious leaders who had gathered.

In somber tones, he then drew parallels between St. Peter’s willingness to follow Jesus Christ and John Paul II’s journey from the grip of tyrannical dictatorships in Poland to the seat of Roman Catholicism’s highest office. He recalled well-known moments from the pontiff’s youth, from his days working in a chemical plant under Nazi occupation and from his years as a clandestine seminarian in communist Poland.

“Rise, let us be on our way!” the homily continued, citing the title of John Paul II’s 2004 autobiography. “With these words [ John Paul II] roused us from a lethargic faith, from the sleep of the disciples of both yesterday and today.”

Ratzinger told of John Paul’s life as a bishop, cardinal, and pope:

The Holy Father was a priest to the last, for he offered his life to God for his flock and for the entire human family, in a daily self-oblation for the service of the Church, especially amid the sufferings of his final months. And in this way he became one with Christ, the Good Shepherd who loves his sheep. The Pope who tried to meet everyone, who had an ability to forgive and to open his heart to all, tells us once again today, with these words of the Lord, that by abiding in the love of Christ we learn, at the school of Christ, the art of true love.

Our Pope—and we all know this—never wanted to make his own life secure, to keep it for himself. He wanted to give of himself unreservedly, to the very last moment, for Christ and thus also for us. And thus he came to experience how everything which he had given over into the Lord’s hands came back to him in a new way. His love of words, of poetry, of literature, became an essential part of his pastoral mission and gave new vitality, new urgency, new attractiveness to the preaching of the Gospel, even when it is a sign of contradiction.

Finally, he told of the Pope’s devotion to Mary and the Divine Mercy of Christ. The cardinal’s last words invoked the memory of Pope John Paul’s attempt to greet the crowd in St. Peter’s Square on Easter, words that he never got out:

None of us can ever forget how in that last Easter Sunday of his life, the Holy Father, marked by suffering, came once more to the window of the Apostolic Palace and one last time gave his blessing urbi et orbi. We can be sure that our beloved pope is standing today at the window of the Father’s house, that he sees us and blesses us. Yes, bless us, Holy Father. We entrust your dear soul to the Mother of God, your Mother, who guided you each day and who will guide you now to the eternal glory of her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Many construed the ending of the homily to mean that the Pope had already entered into heaven, and had become a saint; given Ratzinger’s unimpeachable doctrinal credentials, no one was prepared to challenge him.

Ratzinger became emotional at certain parts of his homily, especially in that final reflection of the inability of Pope John Paul II to speak in the last days of his life. Altogether, the homily was interrupted approximately thirteen times with applause by the congregants, and Ratzinger seemed visibly moved. At one point, his eyes, partially shielded by his reading glasses, appeared to well up with tears.

Perhaps the most indelible memory for anyone who experienced the homily was the way the crowd, quite literally, became Ratzinger’s conversation partner. At first Ratzinger seemed startled by the applause, but quickly he learned to wait for it, not to proceed until the mourners had been heard. Banners reading Santo Subito, “sainthood now,” could be seen across St. Peter’s Square, and repeatedly the crowd broke out into strong and deep chants of santo, santo, “saint, saint.” It seemed a classic illustration of the way cases for sainthood are supposed to work in the Catholic Church. It’s supposed to begin with a popular devotion, what the medievals called fama santitatis, or the “fame of sanctity,” which the Church then examines and ultimately ratifies in an after-the-fact fashion. Evidence that the cardinals were influenced is not hard to come by; in the wake of the funeral Mass, a petition was circulated within the daily General Congregation meetings calling on the next pope to move rapidly toward the beatification and canonization of John Paul II. Discussion of the topic arose within the General Congregation, and Ratzinger called on Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, head of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, who explained that there is an ancient custom of sainthood by “popular acclamation,” and that the next pope could waive the mandatory five-year waiting period, as was done by Pope John Paul in the case of Mother Teresa. She was beatified in 2003, just six years after her death. In May 2005, Pope Benedict XVI announced that the waiting period would also be waived for John Paul II.

Public reaction to Ratzinger’s performance was striking. NBC’s Brian Williams captured the sense of many viewers when he called the homily a “warm, warm remembrance.” It was precisely the emotion of Ratzinger’s homily that struck many cardinals. This is not a man known for wearing his heart on his sleeve, but there he was, with tears in his eyes, talking about the late Pope’s love and self-sacrifice. For cardinals who had concerns about Ratzinger’s capacity to project emotion to a vast audience, the homily gave them a new sense of the man.

Of course, most of these cardinals knew Ratzinger well in private, and viewed him as a badly misunderstood figure. They knew his gentleness, his impish sense of humor, and his genuine lack of what the Italians call being gonfiato, inflated with a sense of one’s own importance. Yet many wondered about his capacity to allow those qualities to shine through in public settings. The funeral Mass thus did much to allay those concerns. To hear the Vatican’s doctrinal enforcer talking about “the art of true love” seemed to mark the emergence of a “new Ratzinger,” or, to put the matter differently, it marked a new stage in his capacity to bring the man many cardinals already knew in private into better alignment with his public image.

There is a sense, therefore, in which the funeral Mass marked the formal beginning of Ratzinger’s candidacy for the papacy. (CNN’s Jim Bitterman interpreted Ratzinger’s repeated invocation of Jesus’ exhortation from the day’s gospel—“Follow me!”—as a kind of campaign slogan. While that may have been overreaching slightly, Bitterman’s sense that Ratzinger was gathering steam proved prophetic.) The Italian papers began to be full of “scoops” and “revelations” about the strength of the pro-Ratzinger vote, suggesting that his base of support was energized by his performance, seized with a new sense that this was not merely the expression of a longing, but a realistic political possibility.

THE IMPACT

No one who watched these scenes play out could be unmoved, and this was especially true of members of the College of Cardinals, who were stunned by this vast popular eruption of love and admiration at the very moment when they were struggling to take stock of the pontificate that had just ended. There is no doubt that the events of the week, the infinite lines to see John Paul’s body lying in state and the massive crowds who roared “ santo, santo” at his funeral, had tremendous psychological impact on the cardinals as they prepared to enter the conclave. If any had arrived in Rome entertaining questions about whether the pontificate of John Paul was fundamentally a success, the experiences of this week eviscerated those doubts. No one could watch the respect paid to the Pope by the VIPs of the world, coupled with his massive popular following, and not draw the conclusion that John Paul II had done something right.

Speaking as these events drew to a close, a number of cardinals made clear that they were deeply stirred by the events of the previous week—and that the emotions had left an impression on their judgments about the kind of pope they needed in order to build on this legacy, which now seemed deeper and more powerful than most of them had imagined.

“It reflects the great impact that John Paul II had on the world,” Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles told the National Catholic Reporter. “He was the people’s pope. He loved people, and they understood that.”

Asked if John Paul would have enjoyed the vast crowds who turned out to bid him farewell, Mahony had no doubt.

“He would have loved it,” Mahony said. “He wanted to connect with people. He was a good pastor, and now the flock is coming to see its pastor.”

Cardinals also noted that the events of the week, especially the lying in state and the funeral, had generated a stretch of positive media coverage for the Catholic Church that was unprecedented in modern times. Many could not stop thanking the press for the round-the-clock positive treatment of John Paul II’s death and its aftermath.

“I want to thank all of you very much for the way you have reported on the death and dying of the Pope,” Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor of Westminster, England, said to a group of journalists shortly before a press blackout was imposed in the week leading up to the conclave. “It has been honest, edifying, and generally very fair.”

Asked how to explain the vast response to John Paul’s death from both elites and the grass roots, Murphy-O’Connor cited two factors. First, he said, thanks to John Paul’s constant travels and outreach, Catholicism was better understood by the world at large. Related to that, he said, John Paul II left a legacy of demonstrating that the Petrine ministry, meaning the office of the pope, is in service not just to the Catholic Church but to the world at large.

“No doubt all his frequent flier miles made a huge difference,” the cardinal said, smiling.

“He brought it into a new dimension,” Murphy-O’Connor said. “He gave it a new role, and new influence, as a moral voice. Because of the global village in which we live, and the means of communication that exist today, he was able to speak to the entire world. The significance of all this is being seen now for the first time. The world has listened.”

To the extent that cardinals had been thinking about electing a pope whose interests would be much more ad intra, the events of this week caused them to think anew. They now realized they needed a pope who would not simply take care of the Church’s internal business, but someone who could reach out, who could inspire and challenge, someone who could leave a mark on his times in a way analogous to John Paul II. The events of this week, in other words, had the cumulative effect of raising the bar for John Paul II’s successor.

A RATZINGER BOOST

What conclusions did the cardinals draw from these experiences?

First, that the global communications industry could be a friend of the Church as well as a critic—if the pope knows how to project a positive message in a media-savvy fashion.

Second, that John Paul’s outreach to the young must continue, since the legions of young Catholics who roared with such enthusiasm in the lines waiting to see the Pope’s body and at the funeral Mass represented the nucleus of a dynamic, living Catholicism in the future.

Third, that the overall thrust of John Paul’s pontificate, whatever its failures and disappointments, was a success. The events of the week between his death and the funeral, in the minds of many cardinal-electors, fortified the case for continuity with the pontificate that had just drawn to a close.

Fourth, that the new pope had to be someone of international stature, someone who could hold his own on the world stage and make the Church’s voice heard in moral and cultural debates, someone who could make the Church relevant. John Paul II more than held his own alongside the Thatchers and Kohls, the Reagans and Clintons and Blairs of his era; in some sense, he towered over them all, and his moral and intellectual leadership was universally recognized, even among those (and there were many) who did not agree with much of what the Pope stood for at the level of content. That fact was confirmed by the staggering turnout of heads of state and political leaders who arrived for the funeral. Watching the extraordinary global response to his death, the 115 cardinals who would elect John Paul’s successor were conscious that the next pope would also have to be someone with this kind of stature, someone of whom the Roman Catholic Church could be proud, not just for his goodness and decency, but also for his intellectual depth and geopolitical vision. The list of such men in this College of Cardinals, as in any small group of potential leaders, was not exceptionally long.

Intuitively, it did not seem that some of these conclusions would automatically translate into support for Ratzinger’s candidacy. The shy, bookish Ratzinger was not known as a charismatic crowd-pleaser, especially with the young, and his media profile was mixed at best. Yet of the four conclusions listed above, probably the one that loomed largest for most cardinals was the argument for continuity with John Paul II, and on this score, in retrospect, Ratzinger was the obvious choice. He was the intellectual architect of the main lines of the late Pope’s reign, and no one in the College of Cardinals knew John Paul’s mind and heart better. If the cardinals were looking for someone to uphold and build upon the thrust of what John Paul set out to achieve, many felt they could do no better than to look to the figure who had been his righthand man since 1981, just three years after the Pope himself took office. The fact that John Paul had extended Ratzinger in office three times beyond the normal five-year term of a curial prefect, that the Pope so obviously felt he could not do without Ratzinger’s advice and guidance, all by itself marked Ratzinger out as the best possible protector of John Paul’s legacy. Moreover, because of Ratzinger’s keen understanding of the Roman Curia and the broader dynamics of ecclesiastical governance, he could ensure that John Paul II’s legacy did not simply vanish, but was translated into structural and institutional reality.

As for the media, the cardinals themselves opted for a rather striking encore to their praise of the media’s coverage of the death and funeral of the Pope: They decided not to talk to the press in the period between the funeral on April 8 and the opening of the conclave on April 18. As word of the press blackout began to circulate, many journalists, especially from the Italian papers, leapt to the conclusion that it must have been Ratzinger, as dean of the College of Cardinals, who imposed the restriction, in keeping with his image as “Cardinal No.” In fact, however, this was not the case. Inside the daily General Congregation meetings of cardinals, pressure had been building for days for an explicit ban on conversations with the press, largely from some curial cardinals as well as some of the Latin Americans who felt it was unfair the way cardinals from Europe and America commanded a disproportionate share of media attention, allowing them to set the public agenda for the conclave through the press. During the period immediately after the blackout went into effect, three cardinals told me on background that it was not Ratzinger who imposed the policy. Indeed, they said, he resisted calls for a formal ban.

In our preconclave interview, Danneels made this explicit, relating that Ratzinger had said in the General Congregation meetings that it was a “human right” of cardinals to speak to whomever they chose. Other cardinals confirmed this account. Instead of an explicit ban, therefore, the cardinals struck a sort of gentleman’s agreement among themselves to be discreet. Through Navarro-Valls, they also issued invitation to the press to leave them alone; as Navarro-Valls described it, “This is not a prohibition, it’s an invitation.”

In other words, to the outside, the maneuvering over the press among the cardinals perhaps seemed a typical authoritarian exercise from Ratzinger. Among the cardinals themselves, however, it was precisely the opposite. Ratzinger respected their individual liberty, had shown sensitivity to the press, and once again seemed victim of an unfair type of character assassination in the broader public discussion. These internal perceptions did much to soften Ratzinger’s image among cardinals who did not know him well, and cause them to think anew about what kind of pope he might make.

On the question of international stature, Ratzinger was clearly among the standouts. He is a widely respected intellectual who has published lucid works of theology and cultural criticism on a staggering variety of subjects. Even in ultra-secular France, where respect for institutional religion is not exactly at an all-time high, Ratzinger has been twice honored for his intellectual accomplishments. On November 6, 1992, he was inducted into the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of the Institute of France, and in 1998 he was installed as a commander in the French Legion of Honor. This, in other words, would be a pope with whom the world would have to reckon.

Finally, as for the question of youth and the “common touch,” no one pretends that Ratzinger can muster quite the same charisma as John Paul II. Yet his powerful performance during the funeral Mass, and the immediate rapport he seemed to establish with the cheering crowd, caused at least some cardinals to look past the old stereotype of Ratzinger as an aloof authoritarian incapable of relating to ordinary people.

In his own mind, Ratzinger’s standout performances probably had nothing to do with improving his chances at election, and everything to do with paying off one final debt to the man he served and loved for a quarter-century, John Paul II. Yet whatever his intent, the reality is that these two weeks transformed Ratzinger from one possibility in a crowded field into a juggernaut whose candidacy proved unstoppable.

“His leadership at the Pope’s funeral was such that we have to give Ratzinger some consideration,” an African cardinal told me on background on Sunday, April 10, eight days before the voting began.

This cardinal acknowledged candidly that he wasn’t yet sold. “How would I explain that the best we could do was a seventy-eight-year-old man already beyond the retirement age for bishops?” he mused, thinking about how he would present the outcome back home. As a man of the global south, this cardinal also confessed that he wanted a pope whose local church would be solidly behind him, a man who could put a face on the energy and dynamism of Catholicism in places like Africa and Latin America. It wasn’t clear to him at that stage that an elderly German cardinal fit that bill.

Then came a telling comment.

“Still, what I saw at that funeral . . . it seemed to me that Ratzinger was taking on something of the style of John Paul II, rather than his own style,” he said. “It certainly made me think.”

Obviously, it made some others think, too.