"I am completely in your hands" Pope John Paul II , Last Will and Testament
With Pope John Paul II laid to rest, attention now turns to the qualities of the next pontiff
Proudly possessive almost to a person were the Poles who came together around a makeshift shrine, tears streaking many of their faces as they sang a Polish hymn in honor of the Virgin Mary. "This pope means everything to me," said David Klamka, a Krakow native born the year after Karol Wojtyla became the pope. His girlfriend, Agatha Mulczynsak, said the fact that she is an atheist made no difference: "He wasn't just the pope for Catholics. He was the pope for everyone, even atheists."
A presence even in death. On Sunday and part of Monday, select groups, lay and clerical, were allowed to view the pope as he lay in state in a large reception hall just beneath his apartments in the Apostolic Palace. Climbing the two long flights of marble stairs, often breaking out in hymns as they drew near the frescoed hall named after Pope Clement VIII, the visitors saw the pontiff, flanked by Swiss guards, laid upon a silk-draped bier, dressed in his formal vestments, including his bishop's miter, but also in the simple, soft leather shoes that he wore throughout his papacy. With no signs of having been touched up with cosmetics, his gray, stubble-covered face showed the ravages of his dying. (Vatican officials later confirmed that the pope had not been embalmed, unlike most recent popes, and had at most received minimal treatment to retard natural deterioration.)
The transfer of the body from the palace to St. Peter's Basilica Monday afternoon brought John Paul II's earthly remains to a broader public. Even before his body was carried to the head of the nave in the basilica, a line of pilgrims extended down the Via della Conciliazione and soon wound its way through a warren of back streets. According to estimates, some 400,000 pilgrims filed past the pope on Monday, 600,000 on Tuesday, and around 1 million on Wednesday.
If the obvious drawing power of John Paul II was clear testimony to his great personal charisma, however, did that necessarily mean that his teaching was widely accepted, even within the church? The strongest critics of his papacy have suggested that his magnetism was bound up with a cult of personality that was carefully promoted by the man and his chief aides. Granting that he did indeed possess a "special charisma," Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, archbishop of Westminster, last week countered those critics by noting that "it was clearly in service in the gospel." Murphy-O'Connor added that the very public way in which the pope died will make the world think seriously about what his faith signified. "He made it clear that the big questions are religious questions that can't be answered just by technology and science."
The extent of the Polish pontiff's humility and piety came out in his last testament. The contents revealed that he considered resigning in 2000, contemplated burial in Poland, and instructed his personal secretary to burn his private papers. He also credited divine providence for averting a nuclear conflict during the Cold War.
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