Faithful visit St. Peter's to honor pope
Cardinals keep public silence vow before vote
VATICAN CITY -- Pilgrims yesterday gazed forlornly at the third-floor window where Pope John Paul II traditionally appeared on Sundays, and cardinals held to their vow of public silence ahead of next week's secret vote on a successor.
The cardinals, who celebrated Masses around Rome, confined their remarks to scripted homilies after pledging Saturday to make no more public statements betraying their thinking before selecting a new leader for the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics.
Mourning pilgrims and curious tourists lined up in a pelting rain to visit St. Peter's Basilica, where John Paul was laid to rest Friday alongside the remains of other popes through the ages.
Throughout his 26-year pontificate, John Paul gave public audiences on Wednesdays and Sundays, greeting the faithful from his window overlooking the square. His last public appearance was March 30, three days before he died at the age of 84.
''It's really sad to look up [at] the window and know he won't be there anymore," said Melica Ventura, 25, of El Salvador.
Catholics around the world packed churches yesterday in tribute to John Paul.
Even the tiny church in reclusive communist North Korea, where the official state media took three days to announce the pope's passing, held a Mass attended by about 100 faithful.
At the Vatican, the grotto deep beneath the basilica holding John Paul's body remained closed, and the Holy See was expected to say today when it would reopen. Keeping it shut was seen as a way to empty Rome of the throngs of pilgrims who converged on the capital for the pope's funeral. By yesterday, most appeared to have left, but there were still large knots of hangers-on, many from John Paul's native Poland. They read Polish newspapers and formed a long line outside a Polish confessional at St. Peter's, one of several that offer the faithful a chance to confess in various languages.
Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the late pope's vicar for Rome, celebrated a late-afternoon Mass for the pontiff at St. Peter's -- a daily rite being held over nine official days of mourning for John Paul.
The 115 cardinals under 80 and therefore eligible to vote will begin meeting April 18 in the Sistine Chapel for the secret conclave to elect a new pope.
Cardinal Bernard F. Law, former archbishop of Boston, celebrated Mass in Rome's St. Mary Major Basilica, the church where John Paul appointed him archpriest. Law today will say the next daily Mass for the pope at St. Peter's Basilica. Leaders of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests said Saturday that they were flying to Rome to protest, arguing that Law's presence was painful to abuse victims and embarrassing to Catholics. 