Vatican City

VATICAN CITY - Presidents and the poor, royalty and the ruled gathered yesterday in St. Peter's Square and the great piazzas of Rome for the funeral of Pope John Paul II, whose death attracted one of the largest religious gatherings in modern times for a tearful - and at times joyful - goodbye. As winds blew across the vast cobblestone square, the giant bell of the basilica tolled slowly, a mournful sound suitable for announcing funerals, though no mourners needed to be called. Already, more than 300,000 people were gathered on the square.

VATICAN CITY - Pope John Paul II's successor won't just face dwindling church attendance and an elderly priesthood: He also has to find new revenue to balance the Vatican's budget. After making a gain for eight years, the Holy See, the central administration for the church, ran deficits in the three years through 2003, the Vatican's financial statements show. The separately run budget for Vatican City, the independent papal state in Rome, was also in the red in 2003, the latest year for which figures are available.

VATICAN CITY - For much of this week, hundreds of thousands of people waited in line to view a body, a scene that would have been morbid in any other city. But this is Rome, a city that reveres the bodies of its heroes. And it is also the heart of Catholicism - a church in which the human body holds a treasured position as the vehicle that God used to speak to man. People who flocked to St. Peter's Basilica to see the remains that once held the life of Pope John Paul II mostly said they wanted to pay respect to the life the pope led, not to the body he left behind.

VATICAN CITY - Pope John Paul II will take a secret to the grave when he is buried tomorrow: the identity of the last cardinal he named. The mystery stems from the rare papal practice of naming cardinals in pectore, or "close to the heart." Popes have usually done this to honor a prelate's service in a country where the Roman Catholic Church is persecuted without further straining the Holy See's relations with that nation or exposing the prelate to harassment. Sometimes even the cardinal in question is unaware of his honor.

VATICAN CITY - Workers hauled in trunks marked diplomatico. Crews labored over the entrance foyer. Maids gathered in the basement cafeteria to rest for a moment. There were so many things left to do yesterday to prepare the Casa Santa Marta for the conclave of cardinals it host to beginning April 18, when they begin their secret deliberations to elect a new pope. "Yes, I'm nervous," sighed one maid, who declined to give her name because neither the hotel staff nor its construction crews are allowed to speak publicly about their role.

VATICAN CITY -- With Rome looking more like a city preparing for attack than for the funeral of a pontiff whose tenure was marked by pleas for peace, cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church chose April 18 as the date to begin their secret deliberations to elect a successor to Pope John Paul II. Extraordinary security measures were in place in preparation for the pope's funeral tomorrow morning. Millions of pilgrims and hundreds of international dignitaries -- presidents, prime ministers, kings and queens -- were arriving in the largest influx of visitors in the city's history.

VATICAN CITY - Cardinals met here privately yesterday to prepare for the funeral of Pope John Paul II and their deliberations to choose his successor, while more than a million people made public displays of their adulation for the pontiff, crowding the city in what is shaping up to be the largest pilgrimage to the Vatican in history. Rome and the Vatican have been hit with a wave of pilgrims, with tens of thousands joining mourning Romans yesterday for a procession past the body of Pope John Paul.

VATICAN CITY -- Draped in crimson vestments, Pope JOhn Paul II lay in state yesterday, his head covered with a white bishop's miter, as church and Italian political leaders bowed before him in prayer. After a morning Mass attended by more than 100,000 worshipers in St. Peter's Square, he lay in the Apostolic Palace's Clementine Hall, a large 17th-century room covered by frescoes and near the papal apartment, where he died Saturday. His death certificate, released yesterday, listed septic shock and heart failure as the causes of death and acknowledged the pontiff's long battle with Parkinson's disease.

VATICAN CITY - Pope John Paul II died yesterday, more than a quarter-century after beginning a reign that transformed the papacy. He succumbed to years of health problems that ravaged his body but did little to diminish his control of the Roman Catholic Church or his political influence across the globe. The pope, 84, died during the third day of a worldwide vigil marked most poignantly by huge crowds that gathered outside his apartment above St. Peter's Square, from where he had led them in prayer for so many years.

VATICAN CITY - With tens of thousands of people praying and singing hymns in St. Peter's Square, Pope John Paul II neared death this morning, his kidneys failing, his breathing shallow and Roman Catholic leaders taking steps to prepare the pontiff's followers for the reality that his fading life would soon be over. "This evening or this night, Christ throws open the doors to John Paul II," Angelo Comastri, the pope's vicar general for Vatican City told about 30,000 people gathered last night in the chill of the square, many gazing above to the lit room of the pope's Vatican apartment.