Posted on 04/08/2005 6:03:35 AM PDT by NYer
VATICAN CITY - Presidents, prime ministers and kings joined pilgrims and prelates in St. Peter's Square on Friday to bid farewell to Pope John Paul II at a funeral service that drew millions to Rome for one of the largest religious gatherings of modern times.
Applause rang out as John Paul's simple wooden coffin adorned with a cross and an "M" for Mary was brought out from St. Peter's Basilica and placed on a carpet in front of the altar. The book of the Gospel was placed on the coffin and the wind lifted the pages.
The Vatican's Sistine Choir sang the Gregorian chant, "Grant Him Eternal Rest, O Lord," and the service got under way. Cardinals wearing white miters walked onto the square, their red vestments blowing in the breeze.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, dean of the College of Cardinals, a close confidant of John Paul and a possible successor, presided at the Mass and referred to him as our "late beloved pope" in a homily that traced the pontiff's life from his days as a factory worker in Nazi-occupied Poland to his final days as the head of the world's 1 billion Catholics.
Interrupted by applause at least 10 times, the usually unflappable German-born Ratzinger choked up as he recalled one of John Paul's last public appearances — when he blessed the faithful from his studio window on Easter.
"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," he said to applause, even among the prelates, as he pointed up to the third-floor window above the square.
"Today we bury his remains in the earth as a seed of immortality — our hearts are full of sadness, yet at the same time of joyful hope and profound gratitude," Ratzinger said in heavily accented Italian.
He said John Paul was a "priest to the last" and said he had offered his life for God and his flock "especially amid the sufferings of his final months."
Ratzinger was interrupted again toward the end of the Mass by several minutes of cheers, rhythmic applause and shouts of "Giovanni Paolo Santo" or "Saint John Paul," from the crowd.
At the beginning of the Mass, Ratzinger prayed for God to "grant your servant and our pope, John Paul II, who in the love of Christ led your church, to share with the flock entrusted to him the reward promised to the faithful ministers of the Gospel."
After the 2 1/2-hour Mass, the body will be carried deep under the basilica, where it will join the remains of popes from throughout the ages near the traditional tomb of the apostle Peter, the first pope.
John Paul requested in his last will and testament to be buried "in the bare earth," and his body will be laid to rest under the floor of the grotto below the basilica. His tomb will be covered with a flat stone bearing his name and the dates of his birth and death. Pilgrims will eventually be able to visit.
At least 300,000 people filled St. Peter's Square and spilled out onto the wide Via della Conciliazione leading toward the Tiber River, but millions of others watched on giant video screens set up across Rome. Banners read "Santo Subito," or "Sainthood Immediately."
Earlier, groggy pilgrims who had camped out on the cobblestones awoke in their sleeping bags to hordes of the faithful stepping over them as they tried to secure a good spot to view the Mass.
The square and the boulevard leading to it were a sea of red and white flags waved by pilgrims from John Paul's beloved Poland, many in traditional dress shouting "Polska! Polska!" Pilgrims from other countries raised their national flags in the crowd — American, Lebanese, Spanish, Croatian — and prayers were read out during the Mass in a host of languages — French, Swahili, Portuguese, among others.
"We just wanted to say goodbye to our father for the last time," said Joanna Zmijewsla, 24, who traveled for 30 hours with her brother from a town near Kielce, Poland, arriving at St. Peter's at 1 a.m. Friday.
American Archbishop James Harvey, head of papal protocol, greeted dignitaries and religious leaders as they emerged onto the steps of the basilica. Many shook Harvey's hand and offered condolences before mingling and taking their appointed seats.
Turbans, fezzes, yarmulkes, black lace veils, or mantillas, joined the "zucchettos," or skull caps, of Catholic prelates on the steps of St. Peter's in an extraordinary mix of religious and government leaders from around the world.
"I'm here because I'm a believer but also to live a moment in history," said Stephan Aubert, wearing a French flag draped over his shoulders.
Bells tolled as the final leaders took their places on red-cushioned wooden seats. Ten minutes before the scheduled start of the funeral, the U.S. delegation arrived, headed by President Bush, and including his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and former President Bill Clinton.
President Bush sat on the aisle in the second row, next to his wife, Laura. Beside them were French President Jacques Chirac and his wife, Bernadette. The two presidents shook hands.
Vatican ushers dressed in white tie and tails seated dignitaries who were given a chance to view John Paul's body before it was carried out of the basilica — where it has lain in state since Monday — and into the square.
Rome itself was at a standstill. Just after midnight Thursday, a ban took effect on vehicle traffic in the city center. Airspace was closed, and anti-aircraft batteries outside the city were on alert. Naval ships patrolled both the Mediterranean coast and the Tiber River near Vatican City, the tiny sovereign city-state encompassed by the Italian capital.
Italian authorities took extraordinary precautions to protect the royalty and heads of state or government attending the funeral.
Elite Carabinieri paramilitary police armed with automatic rifles were stationed at virtually every major intersection in Rome to minimize the threat of a terrorist attack on the more than 80 heads of state and monarchs attending the Mass.
Combat jets from Italy's air force, joined by an AWACS surveillance plane deployed by NATO, guarded against any strike from above on the leaders and top Roman Catholic prelates assembled on St. Peter's Square. Italian security agencies posted snipers on rooftops, and a navy warship armed with torpedoes cruised the coastline near Rome. Anti-aircraft rocket launchers were placed strategically around the capital.
Jewish and Muslim leaders were among the dignitaries from more than 80 countries, including the presidents of Syria and Iran, and the king of Jordan.
The pope's death on Saturday at age 84 has elicited a remarkable outpouring of affection around the world and brought an estimated 4 million people to Rome, doubling its population. Most of the pilgrims, however, can only hope to see the ceremony on giant TV screens that have been erected around the Vatican and in piazzas around Rome.
In Krakow, Poland, where John Paul studied for the priesthood, about 800,000 people watched the funeral on three TV screens set up in a field. Many had spent the night around bonfires after a Thursday night Mass drew a million people.
Sirens wailed in Warsaw for three minutes to announce the start of the funeral to the Polish capital. Some 25,000 people packed Pilsudski Square where the pope celebrated Mass during his first visit to his homeland as pope, and another 2,000 gathered in the Old Town in front of St. Ann's Church to watch the funeral on huge screens.
The faithful gathered in the Philippines, Vietnam and elsewhere to watch the service on television or to pray for John Paul. An overflow crowd of about 7,000 worshippers filled Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
John Paul's funeral began with an intimate ceremony attended only by high-ranking prelates, who placed a pouch of silver and bronze medals and a scrolled account of his life in his coffin.
His longtime private secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, and the master of the liturgical ceremonies, Archbishop Piero Marini, placed a white silk veil over the pope's face before the coffin was closed.
Dziwisz was seen weeping at several occasions during the Mass.
The Vatican released John Paul's last will and testament on the eve of the funeral. Penned in Polish over 22 years, beginning five months after his election in October 1978, he gave instructions for his burial and also told his private secretary to burn his personal notes upon his death.
He also suggested he considered resigning in 2000, when his infirmities were already apparent. Revising his will just three days before a historic pilgrimage to the Holy Land, John Paul prayed that God would "help me to recognize up to what point I must continue this service."
On Thursday, the huge bronze doors of St. Peter's were closed to the public in preparation for the Mass. In four days, some estimates say nearly 2 million pilgrims passed by his bier to pay their last respects.
Rome groaned under the weight of visitors. Side streets were clogged in a permanent pedestrian rush hour, mostly by kids with backpacks. 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.
Thank you, I caught it on C-Span.
NYer says this was the correct form of the Novus Ordo Mass, Kolo, and in the opening part it does contain "Kyrie eleison." Are you saying that the old Mass had more Greek in it?
That is, the RC's who actually use ANY non-English in their Good Friday service.
Thank you nineot. Kolo, apparently there is more Greek in it that I thought -- at least in the traditional RC observances.
This is an excellent point! Recently at a 'gospel soiree', Father was guiding us through an understanding of one of St. Paul's Letters. We read and reread a certain sentence in the English translation. Father began a treatiese, stopped, pondered, reflected, then told us the words in Koine Greek, esplaining the distinct difference in the emphasis on a certain word. It wasn't strong enough in English and he used other English adjectives to support the original significance of the verb. So much for 'sola scriptura'. How blessed are we to have a priest who speaks 8 languages, reads Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Koine Greek and can assist us in our reflections on the gospels.
English is expressly unfit for Orthodox chants because the intonations of the Church Slavonic are completely off-key in English.
I heard a similar argument from a Lebanese parishioner who attempted to explain how the English translations of the original Arabic chants don't fit the meter. Beyond that, there is now a concerted effort in the Maronite Church to prayerfully reflect and make the necessary revisions to some of the poor translations that were made to the original liturgical texts, over the centuries. Those portions of the liturgy in Armaic and Syriac, retain their original text; however, the Arabic translations into English, Spanish and French are often quite commical. The Maronite Church is attempting to remedy this while studying the spread of the Maronite Church to the four corners of the earth. It is an awesome challenge and one they approach with prayerful humility and sincerity.
"English is expressly unfit for Orthodox chants because the intonations of the Church Slavonic are completely off-key in English. Thus, English Orthodox liturgy could be very pleasing to the ear if its intonations were to be changed to reflect the melodic characteristic of the English language."
Nor is it fit for Byzantine chant. Last Friday evening I was at the Akathist Hymn and inside the altar with the priests. The majority of the Hymn was being done in English. I was reading the Greek and found one mistranslation after another. We eventually decided that the monks who had done the translation were attempting to fit English to the Byzantine meter. It fit all right, but it didn;t say what the Greek said.
Some of it was actually rather funny, though not because of the meter. There is a praise to the Most Holy Theotokos which the monks translated "O butter mountain". The Greek and the Arabic, and I susoect the Slavonic, say "O mountain of fat"! Actually this was a great and wonderous thing to people who had little or no fat in their diets. It was something to rejoice in as nourishment of the first order. But it does sound odd to us today in the 21st century West, not that butter mountain sounds all that great either!
It is a miraculous feat that could have been done only with the help of the Holy Spirit! Thus, the word Orthodxy in English is a borrowed foreign (Greek) word. It means nothing to a native English speaker. It's like samovar or samizdat, Samoyed or chai, some of the Slavic words that have crept into the English language. They all have meanings -- but not to English speakers. Thus, Church Slavonic refers to Orthodoxy as Pravoslavye -- from pravo (correct, right, or ortho) and slava (praise, glory, or doxa).
Theotokos is Bogoroditsa from Bog (God) and roditi (to give birth) and tsa to indicate a female gender -- thus Bogo (Theo) roditsa (tokos) is the "woman who gives birth to God" It takes an entire sentence in the English language to translate this and you still don't get the whole meaning, because it sounds awkward wheres in Greek and Slavonic it flows and is natural.
English is a secular language. On the scale of development, liturgical languages are higher languages than secular, and the secular (vernacular) languages are higher than slang. Just as we can't use slang in our official day-to-day business routine, we cannot properly use secular language in our day to day liturgy. Banging trash cans does not compare to Mozart's Requiem because it doesn't sound the same and doesn't convey the same (spiritual) mood.
The purpose of the liturgy is to give praise to God in the best possible way -- not in the most common possible way.
Despite the similarity, because of occasional word order change, the modern Serbian sounds awkward. It doesn't flow as easily as Church Salvonic. And on some occasions even the meter is off.
So, just as we can't change Bethoven's 9th by adding words and changing tones, the same goes for the liturgy. It must be done in its original form to capture the mood for which ti was intended and to flow artistically and gracefully.
We all understand that things are not freely interchangeable (not every woman can be a substitute for one's wife, and not and old man can be your grandfather). These creations, including art are one of a kind and their mold is broken when they are made. Thus changes are merely bad imitations, and there is nothing worse than an imitation other than a bad imitation.
I'm astonished! But you leave out the last word, "eemas", "on us". We chant this in every liturgy. It really is quite express of our theology isn't it!
My point is still valid. A few hundred years is still the early Church.
Some amazing photos on this thread...
The President of Iran was there, along with his contingent.
Add what is lost because of the banality of the English translation of the Mass. That makes it harder to memorize because it does not "sing" the way that, for instance, the Anglican Book of Common Prayer does, or at least used to--Modernists, for some reason, hate poetry and love flat prose.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
No, it's not. Vernacular Latin (vulgate) was the spoken language -- but not the liturgical language. You can translate the Bible in vernacular, but liturgy is a bit different. I dubt that the litugical languge has ever been used as a spoken tongue any more than the slag has been used as an official language.
Being from Wisconsin, I disagree. Butter is Better!
When you say "Church" Slavonic, is that the same as "Old" Slavonic?
Regrettably, I did leave off the "imas."
Hint: my grandchild was visiting today. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MY AGE.
"Being from Wisconsin, I disagree. Butter is Better!"
Well, heaven knows its got "mountain of fat" beat by a mile! Personally, I prefer olive oil! :)
Ah, well, that restores my faith in at least some of your liturgists, :)
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