Vere Papa Mortuus Est

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.

Twenty-one candles were placed by the bier; 16 guards kept watch around the clock. That night the Pope lay alone, except for guards, almost on the spot from which he had addressed his his toric Vatican Council II. In the next two days, more than 1,000,000 people shuffled by the body to pay their last respects. On Thursday night, the body, inside a triple coffin of walnut, lead and cypress, was placed in the crypt beneath St. Peter's; eventually, in accordance with John's wishes, it will be moved to the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the Pope's cathedral as Bishop of Rome. Then the priests and nuns who had served John in his papal household packed their belongings and quietly went home to Bergamo and Venice. "Incomparable Pope." John XXIII was, said Milan's Giovanni Cardinal Montini, "an incomparable Pope," and much of the world, Catholic and non-Catholic, seemed to agree. Protestant and Orthodox churches held memorial services in his honor; Jewish religious leaders mourned; Boston's Richard Cardinal Gushing announced that he would push for an immediate start on canonization proceedings. Nikita Khrushchev sent a warm message saying that John had "won the respect of peace-loving peoples"-the first time a Soviet leader has ever noticed the death of a Pope.

But perhaps the loss was most deeply felt in Sotto il Monte, the mountain village where John was born. There, even local Communists tied black rib bons of mourning to the yellow and white Vatican flags that were every where on display. "We have lost a friend," said one villager. "This must be the only village in Italy that is not thinking of who will now be the Pope."

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