Memories of Pope John Paul

This Saturday sees the 6^th anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul the Second amid the continuing preparations for his beatification ceremony on May 1^st. Church organizers say they are expecting at least 300 thousand people to crowd into and around St. Peter's Square for the beatification mass but say the eternal city is ready to welcome other pilgrims who want to come to Rome. They denied earlier press reports that every hotel is booked out.

All those who were in Rome when the much-loved pope died, vividly recall the extraordinary scenes when millions of mourners flocked to the city from all over the world to pay their respects to his body. John Allen works for the National Catholic Reporter and is one of the U.S’s leading commentators on Catholic affairs. He looks back at the figure of the late pope and shares with Susy Hodges his own memories of that exceptional April in 2005.
Allen says his "indelible impression" of those days was that "tital wave of humanity that poured through the streets of Rome and through St. Peter's Square" ... and to his mind what was one of the most surprising things "was the enormously prayerful atmosphere in the crowd."

Allen recalls interviewing one American man from Chicago who on learning of the pope's death, had flown to Rome, got a taxi to St. Peter's Square and then "stood in a line for almost 48 hours in order to get those fleeting few seconds in front of the pope's body" and told them "it was the most powerful experience of his life." That story, he continues was just one example of the "uneradicable spiritual connection people felt with this man, which was multiplied by millions of times." Listen: