Pope’s crypt to open to tourists next week

ROME (AFP) — The crypt containing the tomb of John Paul II will open to pilgrims and tourists early next week as the Vatican heads into an interregnum in the wake of the late pope’s epic funeral.

St. Peter’s Basilica, where hundreds of thousands of mourners filed past the Pope’s body as it lay in state last week, reopened to tourists for the first time in five days on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Rome itself returned to normal after welcoming an estimated four million pilgrims for Friday’s funeral, more than the number who visit Lourdes, Christianity’s biggest shrine, in a year.

Mayor Walter Veltroni said the city’s main rail terminal would be renamed after the pontiff, who died on April 2.

Veltroni told journalists that after a new pope is named, authorities would consult with the Vatican on how to give it a look that "strongly recalls the message of a pope who was the pontiff of awareness, dialogue and travel."

Meanwhile, following the scores of world leaders who flew out of Rome after the funeral, tens of thousands of ordinary mourners also packed trains, planes and coaches out of the city.

More than 200,000 of them are believed to have come from the pope’s native Poland.

More than 200 world leaders, including UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, US President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and envoys from major religious faiths attended the funeral, one of the largest in modern history.

"The entire country, all of Italy, should be proud of its capital," Veltroni told a news conference.

Meanwhile, the head priest of St. Peter’s Basilica, Cardinal Francesco Marchisano, said the next pope should be stamped with the "infinite humanity" of John Paul II.

"How many times did he walk with others, in the various nations where there were problems, always to find a solution," Marchisano, 75, said.

For many in Friday’s tumultuous crowd, those qualities made the redoubtable Pole a saint in his own lifetime, and at one stage during his requiem Mass they clamored for the Church to declare him one as quickly as possible.

The Vatican was forced to acknowledge the campaign, which made newspaper headlines Saturday, when Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said that only the next pope could decide whether to elevate the late pope to sainthood.