Millions worldwide pray for pope
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| |  A young man prays in front of a sculpture of Pope John Paul II in Pompei, Italy.  Worshippers light candles and pray next to a picture of Pope John Paul II in Vienna.  Devotees offer candles and prayers for Pope John Paul II at Westminster Cathedral in London.  An Indian Christian woman prays during a holy mass at a church in Bangalore, India.  Worshippers pray for the recovery of Pope John Paul II in St. Anna's church in Warsaw, Poland. |
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PARIS, France (AP) -- Around the world, the faithful lit candles, prayed and reflected on Pope John Paul II's legacy Saturday as he neared death. Some worshippers hoped for a dignified end to his suffering.
Sports-mad Italy suspended all weekend sport events -- including Serie A soccer, a playoff for the Italian ice hockey title, basketball and volleyball league matches, and amateur sports -- as a sign of respect for the critically ill pontiff.
After the long agony of John Paul's very public battle with failing health, some prayed death would come peacefully. At Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, worshippers and tourists lit candles beneath a photo of the pope from 1997 that recalled his earlier vigor.
"It's a time of sadness and a real time of reflection on what the pope has done in his 26 years as pope," said Mike Miller, an American visitor. "A really great man, and it's a very somber time."
Candlelit photos of John Paul also were displayed in London's Westminster Cathedral, at a basilica in Algiers, and at Vienna's St. Stephen's Cathedral. There, Regina Fischer said that while she was not a regular churchgoer, the pope's suffering moved her to pray.
"I want him not to get better, but to have a death with dignity," she said.
The pope's condition was front page news across much of Asia but not in China, where the state-run media ignored it. Beijing's communist government broke ties with the Vatican in 1951 and worship is allowed only in state-approved churches, and millions of Chinese Catholics, risking arrest, belong to unofficial congregations loyal to Rome.
Even as John Paul lay gravely ill, the Vatican said Saturday that Chinese authorities recently arrested three officials from China's nongovernment controlled Catholic Church.
Beijing worshipper Li Guojun said he wished China would resolve its dispute with the Vatican.
"You do not have to believe in God, but why do you fear the pope?" Li said. "Politicians talk about human rights a lot, why don't they consider the thought of so many Catholics?"
In Pakistan, a mainly Muslim country that the pope visited in 1981, children lit candles as their tearful teachers and many others gathered at a Roman Catholic church in the central city of Multan to pray.
In the small northern Iraq town of Tel Kief, a crumbling village of mud-brick homes bearing crosses above front entryways, Chaldean Catholics also offered prayers. Tel Kief is 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city.
"We feel very bad about the pope, but this is the choice of God," said Adel Changu, a 55-year old Chaldean. "The Pope represents love for everyone. He is a link between God and people. He only wants peace for the people and he doesn't pay attention to their differences," said the shopkeeper as U.S. Army soldiers patrolled the narrow, rubbish-strewn streets outside.
In Croatia, where nearly 90 percent of the 4.5 million people consider themselves Roman Catholics, President Stipe Mesic canceled a trip so he could monitor news about the pope. Croatians flocked to churches.
Some 1,500 people gathered at the famous 13th-century Gothic cathedral in Cologne, Germany.
At Westminster Cathedral in London, Bishop Alan Hopes said John Paul "has been on a journey throughout his life and this is his final journey."
"He has said he has been searching for God all his life and now He has come to him. I think he is at rest in that," Hopes said at Mass.
At a noon Mass in St. Mary's basilica in Wadowice, the southern Polish town of 20,000 where the pope was born 84 years ago, the Rev. Krzysztof Glowka told a packed church that "we are here to be with John Paul in his agony, to experience, together with him, this great mystery of life that is death."
"Now as a sick and dying person he is teaching us the most important lesson, the lesson of dying and the lesson of perseverance," he said.
A dozen elderly women prayed for John Paul through the night in St. Mary's. As the sun rose, townspeople and foreigners joined them, including Croats who made a detour from a trip to Prague to pray for the pontiff in the church where he was baptized.
"This has been the longest morning for me in my entire life," said Jadwiga Byrska, a retiree. "Everything is in God's hands now."
The first non-Italian pope in centuries, John Paul had a manner that made people around the world think of him as their own.
Even non-Catholics embraced John Paul, crediting him for ending wars, spreading democracy and combating religious animosity. He transformed the papacy from an arbiter of religious doctrine to a global advocate for peace, understanding and responsibility.
"Jean Paul II has been was excellent pope," said Alfred Donath, head of the Swiss Confederation of Hebrew Congregations.
"He worked to bring Jews and the Catholic Church closer together. He was the first pope to visit a synagogue. He also traveled to Israel and visited the Wailing Wall," he said. "We'll never forget that he presented his excuses to the victims of the Holocaust for the attitude of Catholics during the Second World War."
