John Paul II Dies at 84
Long-Serving and Well-Traveled Pope Persevered Despite Illness
 

VATICAN CITY, April 2 -- John Paul II, the voyager pope who helped conquer communism and transformed the papacy with charisma and vigor, died Saturday night after a long battle with Parkinson's disease that became a lesson to the world in humble suffering.

"Our most beloved Holy Father has returned to the house of the Father," Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, a senior Vatican official, told pilgrims in St. Peter's Square. The throng of about 60,000 momentarily stood in stunned silence, stared at the pavement and wept. Then, following an Italian custom that signifies hope at a time of death, the mourners broke into sustained applause.

John Paul died at 9:37 local time in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace on a clear and cool night, with a small group of Polish prelates and nuns at his bedside. The first indication of the pope's passing was the illumination of several windows in his private quarters overlooking St. Peter's Square. An e-mail announcement followed. A half-hour later, the bells of all of Rome's churches rang out in mourning.

The news evoked an outpouring of emotion throughout the world. In Paris, mourners packed special midnight services; church bells sounded in Cuba. President Bush called John Paul "a champion of human freedom" and "a good and faithful servant of God. . . . We're grateful to God for sending such a man, a son of Poland."

The pope's body will lie in state in St. Peter's Basilica beginning Monday afternoon. The date of his funeral will be set by a gathering of cardinals on Monday morning, but under guidelines set by him, it should take place within four to six days of his death. Within 15 to 20 days, the College of Cardinals will meet in the Sistine Chapel to elect a successor as bishop of Rome and supreme pontiff of the 1 billion-plus-member Roman Catholic Church.

The pope, who was 84, had slipped in and out of consciousness Saturday. The last medical bulletin from the Vatican, issued in the early evening, said he had developed a sudden fever in late morning. The pope had suffered from Parkinson's disease for years; his death was the culmination of a chain of medical setbacks that began in early February with influenza that forced him into a Rome hospital.

Joaquin Navarro-Valls, his spokesman, said that the pontiff received the Viaticum, a rite for the approach of death, during an 8 p.m. bedside Mass and died surrounded by his closest Polish aides and household staff. The only Italians present were three physicians and two nurses.

His death brought an end to the Roman Catholic Church's third-longest papacy, a reign that was at once energetic, charismatic and polarizing.

John Paul successfully encouraged the largely peaceful revolts against Soviet rule in his native Poland and across Eastern Europe. He was the most traveled pontiff in the 2,000-year history of the church, visiting 129 countries outside Italy.

He created more saints than any of his predecessors and issued numerous encyclicals and other teaching documents, a total of nearly 100,000 pages. "He was the first world evangelist," said Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the archbishop of Westminster in England.

John Paul also attacked what he considered moral relativism inside and outside the church and tamped out leftist movements in the church that operated under the rubric of liberation theology. He held a rigid line against contraception, abortion, cloning and same-sex marriage. He barred the ordination of women as priests and defended celibacy in the priesthood.

His election in October 1978 brought a new style to an old institution. He was the first non-Italian pope in 4 1/2 centuries. His athletic grace and humor captivated Rome and his global audiences. His command of television spread his teachings far beyond even the huge crowds he attracted on his travels, which included five trips to the United States.

To the end, even in visible pain, unable to walk and finally unable to speak, he used his physical presence as a teaching tool. On Easter Sunday, he sat at his apartment window for 12 minutes and tried to deliver a blessing to worshipers below. Failing, he brushed away aides who tried to wheel him from the window before he was ready.

On Saturday, Vatican officials said he was still trying to send messages. Navarro-Valls said the pope's advisers had "reconstructed" the words he wished to utter to young Catholics holding a vigil for him in St. Peter's Square. "I was looking for you. You have come for me, and I thank you," he was quoted as saying.

Senior prelates who called on John Paul in the past two days described poignant scenes of the pontiff clinging to life, unable to concelebrate the morning Mass said at his bedside. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, dean of cardinals and the Vatican's senior guardian of doctrine, told an Italian Catholic news agency that when he entered the pope's suite Friday, the pontiff "gave me the final farewell."

"He was aware that he is passing to the Lord," said Ratzinger, who worked closely with John Paul for almost 25 years.

Achille Silvestrini, a cardinal in charge of relations with churches of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, visited the pope Saturday morning and said afterward: "His slow death throes proceed. I found him relaxed, placid, serene. He was in his bed. He was breathing without labor. He looked like he lost weight."

A pair of terse medical bulletins foreshadowed the end. For the first time since his health deteriorated sharply on Thursday, Vatican officials described the pope's mental condition without using the word lucid. Though denying that he was comatose, Navarro-Valls said he had lapsed into a "compromised state of consciousness."

By 11 p.m., with the death a fact, St. Peter's Square was filled to overflowing, and cars and pedestrians from all over the city set out for the Vatican. Rome's bells tolled again as prayers were repeated and hymns sung at St. Peter's. "He preached his last sermon through his death," said Gerald O'Collins, a theology professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

Dominick Ostrowski, a 30-year-old diocesan priest from Turin who has cancer, said the pope "showed me that even if you're dying of a disease, you can still be efficient and attentive." Shielding a candle in his palm from the jostling crowd at St. Peter's, Ostrowski said John Paul "showed me not to be afraid."

In recent months, the Vatican effectively invited the world's Catholics to follow the pope's final days up close, sharing the experience of his death as a way of expressing his philosophy of life, which was to be lived fully, morally and actively to the very end.

"His human life ebbs away, and it is not only coming to an end, it is coming to a culmination," Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia said in a telephone interview shortly before the pope's death. "He has expressed, over and over again, the idea that human dignity is not in any way impaired by physical limitations. And now the whole world sees him in a moment of severe physical limitation as he approaches the moment of his death."

Thousands of people kept the somber vigil on St. Peter's Square. Most stood or sat on the cobblestones with their eyes lifted toward the papal apartment on the top floor of the Apostolic Palace, which overlooks the square in front of St. Peter's Basilica. Some hugged each other as a group of 50 German women sang hymns in Latin. The crowd included people of all ages and many religions.

Henry Silver, 21, of Bethesda, said that as a Jew, he came to "pay my respects" to the "first pope to go to a synagogue and to pray at the Wailing Wall" in Jerusalem.

"He's the pope for Catholics, but I feel like he prays for everyone and has appreciation for everyone," said Silver, who is spending his junior at the University of Maryland studying in Rome. Sitting with him was classmate Emily Ferrall, also 21, a Roman Catholic from Olathe, Kan. She called John Paul "my only pope" because his pontificate began before she was born.

"He was the pope we learned about in Sunday school. And then he was the pope I taught about when I taught Sunday school," she said. "He's someone I've always been proud to say is the head of my church."

Following a pope's death, his ring is symbolically crushed, his apartment is sealed and all the top officials in the Vatican automatically lose their jobs except the camerlengo -- the chamberlain -- and two other officials who oversee day-to-day operations.

By Saturday afternoon, initial preparations for the funeral were underway. Workers dismantled a canopy on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica used to shield the pontiff and other church leaders from the sun during outdoor services. Portable toilets were hauled into place for the expected throngs of pilgrims who will come to the Vatican to view the pope's body and attend the funeral.

The Rome city government designated stadiums to house pilgrims and announced an increase in bus service. The state railway system will add trains.

In Vatican City, the post office announced that it would issue a special stamp, which can be used only in the interregnum before a new pope is elected. The "vacant See" stamp bears the image of crossed keys, the symbol of Saint Peter, but no papal headgear, as is customary.

By Daniel Williams and Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 3, 2005; Page A01