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Apr 2, 2005 9:52 am US/Eastern
Poles Keep Vigil In Pope's Hometown
Pope's Stance Help Bring Down Communism In Poland
WADOWICE, Poland (AP) ―
Poles prayed for Pope John Paul II on Saturday with grief over their beloved native son's approaching death mixed with a wish to see an end to his long and public suffering.
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.
In nearby Krakow, an old friend of the pope, Danuta Michalowska, 82, said her grief had kept her from sleeping for two days. But she had taken solace in a personal letter the pope sent her just last week.
"It was just as if he had written it 20 years ago," said Michalowska, who acted in an underground Krakow theater with young Karol Wojtyla during the Nazi occupation of Poland in the early 1940s. "He joked in the letter and kidded me, as he always did."
St. Mary's in Wadowice stayed open overnight as people flocked from around Poland and outside the country to the pope's hometown to pay their respects.
"If there were a chance for him to get well, I would want him to live until he is 200," said electrician Ryszard Kozak, 45, leaving an early Mass. "But it's just human selfishness to wish for him to continue on like this if it means more suffering."
Many began to think of what will happen after his death, some voicing hope the pontiff's body be returned to his native land for burial.
Most popes in recent centuries have been buried in the St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, his wishes have not been made public and many in Poland are speculating he may be laid to rest alongside Polish kings in Krakow's Wawel Cathedral.
Some voiced hope that even if the pope is laid to rest in Italy, his heart may be interred in the Polish cathedral.
"It is not possible that he'll be buried in Krakow—only in Rome," Kozak said. "But it would be very nice to have at least a part of this great person in his own country. Maybe just his heart."
The pope is deeply loved in mainly Roman Catholic Poland, where his 26-year pontificate has served as a source of great national pride and where gratitude is still strong for his role in helping bring down communism in 1989-90 and freeing Poland from domination by the Soviet Union.
Polish newspapers on Saturday were filled with news of little else.
"The Holy Father is close to God," read the headline in the daily Rzeczpospolita, its pages filled with photographs of people worldwide praying for the pontiff. The daily Gazeta Wyborcza's headline read "John Paul II is leaving."
(© 2005 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
