Religion: A Light That Left Us Amazed

In Rome, Cardinals bury a Pope and ponder his successor

He went in the cold Roman dusk to take his place among the Popes buried in the crypt of St. Peter's, to lie between his two namesakes, John XXIII and Paul VI. As the plain cypress coffin was borne through the portals of the great basilica, the huge, tearful crowd standing in the rainswept square burst into applause. At the Requiem Mass that preceded the burial, it rained intermittently. As if to counteract the rain clouds, in his funeral address 85-year-old Carlo Cardinal Confalonieri compared Pope John Paul to "a meteor that unexpectedly lights up the heavens and then disappears, leaving us amazed and astonished ... One month was enough for him to win our hearts;... it is not the length which characterizes the life of a pontificate, but rather the spirit that fills it."

As mourners listened, Confalonieri mentioned as well the devotion of nearly a million people who had waited in the square to pay their last respects. It was an allusion to the extraordinary outburst of popular feeling for John Paul, both in Rome and around the world, that will have a special impact upon the difficult decision of the assembled Cardinals who next week must choose his successor.

John Paul had died so abruptly that he left no funeral instructions, but the Cardinals quickly decided upon the style of simple, stately rites that had been held for Pope Paul VI eight weeks ago. They kept to an open-air Mass in St. Peter's Square, despite the virtual certainty of rain, so as not to disappoint the more than 50,000 people who, rain or shine, desired to attend. At one point during the Requiem, a downpour drenched the solitary coffin, and aides rushed up with umbrellas to shield the 90 white-mitered Cardinals.

With the funeral over, Rome entered the nine-day mourning period, or novendiali, and the assembled Cardinals continued with daily meetings to prepare for the Oct. 14 conclave. This time most of the housekeeping details had a strong air of déjà vu about them. But there were some new problems.

One was the slightly ghoulish fuss raised over the suddenness of John Paul's death. As is the case when any world figure dies unexpectedly, rumors of foul play inevitably circulated and were not easily stilled, especially after Milan's respected Corriere della Sera called for an autopsy. The situation did not improve when it was learned that, contrary to the Vatican's first description of John Paul's last moments, what the Pope may have been reading when he died of a heart attack was not Thomas a Kempis' Imitation of Christ but a document written by Pope Paul VI.

Vatican sources later let it be known that the document was a gloomy report on the state-of-the-church in a certain nation that could only have shocked John Paul. Besides, earlier on the day of his death, a Cardinal living in Rome had apparently rebuffed John Paul by refusing to accept appointment as the new Pope's successor as Patriarch of Venice. Such reports suggested that John Paul may quite literally have been shocked to death. Other Vatican sources say that John Paul was overwhelmed by the complexity of the Vatican Curia and that the resulting strain contributed to his sudden death.