VATICAN CITY — Pope John Paul II was near death as dawn broke Saturday, his breathing shallow and his heart and kidneys failing, the Vatican said. Millions of faithful around the world paid homage, many weeping as they knelt with bowed heads, others carrying candles in prayer for the 84-year-old pontiff.
The pope "is on the verge of death," Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, head of the Vatican's health care office, told the Mexican television network Televisa earlier. "I talked to the doctors and they told me there is no more hope."
Addressing the crowd at St. Peter's Square, where as many as 70,000 people prayed and stood vigil in the chilly night, Angelo Comastri, the pope's vicar general for Vatican City, said, "This evening or this night, Christ opens the door to the pope,"
At times the huge gathering fell so silent that the sound of the square's trickling fountains was audible. At other points, the crowd sang, "Stay with us!" But as dawn approached, the numbers in the sprawling plaza diminished. Many of those who stayed wrapped themselves in blankets and gazed tearfully at John Paul's third-floor windows, where the lights remained in the pope's studio and his secretary's room. The papal bedroom was dark.
Around the world, priests readied Roman Catholics for John Paul's passing. Many expressed hope that his final hours would be peaceful.
"Now he prepares to meet the Lord," Cardinal Francis George said at a Mass in Chicago. "As the portals of death open for him, as they will for each of us ... we must accompany him with our own prayers."
Newspapers in Italy devoted most of their Saturday editions to the suffering of the Polish pope, whose given name is Karol Wojtyla. Il Tempo showed a photo of the white-clad pontiff with his back turned to the camera, with the headline, "Ciao, Karol."
The Il Secolo XIX newspaper of Genoa reported that the pope, with the help of his private secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, wrote a note to his aides urging them not to weep for him.
"I am happy, and you should be as well," the note reportedly said. "Let us pray together with joy."
The Vatican said Friday morning that John Paul was in "very grave" condition after suffering blood poisoning from a urinary tract infection the previous night, but that he was "fully conscious and extraordinarily serene." The pope was being treated by the Vatican medical team and declined to be hospitalized.
