In a highly unusual ceremony, the body of Pope John XXIII was wheeled through St Peter's Square yesterday during a Mass presided over by Pope John Paul II. Thirty-eight years after his death, John XXIII returned to the heart of the Vatican in a bronze and glass coffin in which his heavily embalmed features were easily recognisable for the 30,000 pilgrims gathered in St Peter's Square.
Yesterday's ceremony marked the formal moving of the body of John XXIII from the Vatican crypt to a new site, in the side-chapel of San Girolamo in the Basilica of St Peter's. The move had been prompted by the large numbers of pilgrims who had wanted to pay special homage to John XXIII, for long known in his native Italy as Il Papa Buono.
When the late Pope's coffin was opened last January, his body was found to be in excellent condition. At the time, devotees of John XXIII had suggested that the lack of decomposition was nothing less than a miracle. The Vatican, however, firmly rejected this interpretation, pointing out that the body had been heavily embalmed, treated with formalin and buried in a multi-layered, hermetically sealed coffin.
In truth, as 16 Vatican officials wheeled the body through St Peter's Square yesterday morning, the heavily waxed face of the late Pope struck a surreal note as it sparkled in the bright sunshine. Dressed in a white tunic, a red velvet cap and red hat, the body passed through the square in an eerie silence, broken only by discreet applause and the murmur of pilgrims' prayers.
Beatified last September by Pope John Paul II, John XXIII was Pope for only five years from 1958 to 1963, having been elected at the age of 77. Despite its brevity, his pontificate was one of the most significant of the 20th century, marked above all by his calling of the Second Vatican Council, regarded as an important watershed in recent Catholic history.