The Papacy: Vere Papa Mortuus Est

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Pope John's last illness set a mortal infection against a strong heart, which -as the world waited fearfully-pumped like a clock for three days after doctors gave up hope on Friday, May 31. A stomach tumor, with internal hemorrhages, had struck him earlier in the week, but it was the resulting peritonitis that now brought him near death. He lapsed in and out of comas, scarcely able to bear the pain that morphine could no longer kill. "My Jesus," he cried out in a lucid moment during his last ordeal. "Free me now. I cannot endure it. Take me with you."

On Monday, his pulse began to fall; his body-resting on a simple, low wooden bed to which he had been moved to make medication easier-shook with spasms. Late in the afternoon, he spoke his last words: "Mater mca [my mother]"-the first words of an invocation to the Virgin Mary that he had learned as a seminarian. Then his body was convulsed by a brief shudder, and he died.

Unchanging Ritual. John XXIII was one of the most modern of Popes; his death was marked by ceremonies that have scarcely changed in hundreds of years. Carrying the traditional gold-tipped staff, Benedetto Cardinal Aloisi Masella, the Vatican chamberlain and chief executive of the Roman Catholic Church until a new Pope is elected, took custody of the gold Fisherman's ring that the Pope used for sealing documents; it was later broken and the pieces buried with John's body. To those in the room, Aloisi Masella spoke the ritual words: "Vere Papa mortuus est [The Pope is truly dead]." He then signed a formal certificate of death, and Vatican clerics dressed the body for its final appearance: golden miter, white alb, crimson and gold gloves, chasuble, buskins and slippers. In John's hands was placed the tiny black crucifix he had held in his final hours. The bells of Rome's 540 churches pealed out a requiem across the city.

Cardinal Aloisi Masella decided that the Pope's body should be carried through St. Peter's Square before it lay in state inside the basilica. On the day after his death, Palatine and Swiss Guards led the great procession through the square, crowded with upwards of 80,000 people. The Pope's body lay on a litter; behind it walked his sister and three brothers, in tears. Inside St. Peter's, the corpse was borne to a high catafalque beneath the ornate Bernini baldacchino that covers the main altar.