http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&u=/ap/20050407/ap_on_re_eu/pope_36
Police Turn Back Crowds From Viewing Pope
19 minutes ago
By VICTOR L. SIMPSON, Associated Press Writer
VATICAN CITY - After electronic highway signs and cell phone text
messages failed to stanch the flow of pilgrims, police stepped in
Wednesday to turn back mourners hoping to join the 24-hour line to
view the body of Pope John Paul II, on a day that brought almost 1
million people to the Vatican.
The crowd control problems developed hours after the College of
Cardinals set April 18 as the start of its conclave in the Sistine
Chapel to choose a successor to John Paul, a papal election with new
rules and new technological challenges.
Using a special entrance for VIPs, President Bush viewed the body with
his wife, Laura, along with his father, former President Clinton and
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, shortly after the U.S. delegation
reached Rome. They knelt in a pew in front of the remains, bowing
their heads in prayer, joining a million pilgrims who had filed
solemnly through St. Peter's Basilica.
Seeking to clear the basilica by Thursday evening so the Vatican could
prepare for John Paul's funeral the following day, police announced
they were closing the line at 10 p.m. Text messages were sent over
Italian cellular phone lines. Those at the back would wait 24 hours
before entering the basilica.
"We're just hoping the order can be reversed," said Federica Bruni, a
20-year-old student who came from northern Italy and was one of the
first to be told to go away Wednesday night.
It took more than an hour after the deadline to set up the barricades
and establish the cutoff point.
"You tell these people!" said one Civil Defense officer in frustration
as the time passed for the line to end. "How can we close?"
"It's possible there are 1 million people out there," said Luca
Spoletini of the Civil Defense Department. "They are all concentrated
outside St. Peter's ... We are all working to ensure maximum
tranquility."
At the United Nation, General Assembly members stood in silent tribute
to the pope on Wednesday and diplomats offered condolences to his
native Poland and the Holy See, which has observer status at the U.N.
The Vatican is a keeper of secrets without parallel, but there were
questions Wednesday about whether the deliberations in the conclave �
and the name of the new pope � could be kept within the frescoed walls
in an era of cell phones and now that the cardinals will be allowed to
roam freely around the Vatican.
"They've assured us there are ways to block all communications and
conversations," Chicago Cardinal Francis George said. "They're taking
precautions to prevent outside interference. ... No cell phones, no
laptops, nothing."
The severest of punishments � including excommunication and "grave
penalties" meted out by the pope himself � await anyone who breaks the
sacred oaths of secrecy.
John Paul set out the penalties in a 1996 document, giving cardinals
who will choose his successor a set of detailed guidelines to ensure
the centuries-old process of electing a pope is safe in the modern age.
In it, he called for a clean sweep by "trustworthy" technicians of the
Sistine Chapel and adjoining rooms to prevent bugs and other
audiovisual equipment from being installed. He banned telephones.
Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the cardinals would
celebrate a morning Mass on April 18, then be sequestered in the
Sistine Chapel in the early afternoon for their first ballot.
In past conclaves, cardinals were sequestered in the Apostolic Palace,
crammed into tiny makeshift cubicles with limited toilet facilities
and no running water.
In 1996, however, John Paul said the cardinals would instead be housed
in a hotel he had built within the Vatican walls. Each cardinal now
has a private room and bath.
It was originally believed they would move between the hotel and the
Sistine Chapel under escort, but Archbishop Piero Marini, the papal
master-of-ceremonies, disclosed Tuesday they were free to go about the
Vatican between voting sessions.
According to church law, prelates are expected to hold at least one
ballot on the first day of a conclave. Under revisions by John Paul,
if no one gets the required two-thirds majority after about 12 days,
cardinals may change the procedure and elect a pope by a simple majority.
The number of cardinal electors under age 80 and thus eligible to vote
is 117, but only 116 will enter the conclave because Cardinal Jaime
Sin of the Philippines is too ill to attend. Sin, now 76, had been one
of only three cardinal electors who also took part in the 1978
conclave to elect John Paul.
John Paul's spiritual testament, read Wednesday, was a 15-page
document written in his native Polish over the course of his
pontificate starting in 1979, a year after he was elected. It did not
name the mystery cardinal he created in 2003, Navarro-Valls said,
ending speculation that a last-minute cardinal might join in the
conclave.
Navarro-Valls ruled out that John Paul's body would be brought to St.
John Lateran Basilica, across Rome, before Friday's burial, as was
done for Pope Pius XII in 1958.
The spokesman said that with such crowds already converging on Rome,
the Vatican could not meet requests for a viewing at what is Rome's
cathedral. Instead, John Paul will be buried immediately in the grotto
under St. Peter's Basilica, he said.
Giant television screens will be set up at St. John Lateran so that
crowds who gather there will be able to view the funeral proceedings,
he said.
The crush of pilgrims on the road leading to the Vatican will rise
sharply when an expected 2 million Poles arrive in Rome for the funeral.
Italian Cardinal Pio Laghi told reporters the scene was like a cloud,
"but it is a cloud that is luminous and full of life."
Italian authorities readied anti-aircraft rocket launchers among
security measures to protect the scores of dignitaries converging on
Rome for Friday's pomp-filled funeral in St. Peter's Square.
Italy was calling in extra police to the capital and planned to seal
off much of the Eternal City on Friday to protect a VIP contingent
that will also include French President Jacques Chirac, U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the presidents of Syria and Iran,
among other heads of state.
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