Vatican says pope's funeral will take place Friday

VATICAN CITY — With tens of thousands of pilgrims converging Monday on Rome, the Vatican set the funeral of Pope John Paul II for Friday, with burial in the grotto of St. Peter's Basilica, where pontiffs throughout the ages have been laid to rest.

Chief spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls made the announcement after the College of Cardinals held two meetings over the course of 2 1/2 hours in its first gatherings ahead of a secret vote later this month to elect a successor to John Paul.

The funeral is expected to draw up to 2 million people, including heads of state from around the world. President Bush and his wife confirmed they would attend, as did Spain's prime minister. Prince Charles put off his wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles for a day so he could attend.

Vatican employees filed silently past the body Monday morning to pay their last respects. Members of the public lined up by the tens of thousands in the glaring sun hours before the start of a public viewing and a prayer service at St. Peter's Basilica later in the day.

Rome police estimated the crowd stood at 100,000 at 2 p.m. — more than three hours before the body was to be brought into the basilica.

The spokesman said John Paul's body will be carried briefly through St. Peter's Square later Monday en route to the basilica, where a prayer service will be celebrated by Cardinal Eduardo Martinez Somalo, the camerlengo, or chamberlain who is the most important official running the church following the pope's death. After the service, the public will be allowed to view the body.

"It's extraordinary. It happens once in a lifetime," said Uwe Kunzmann, a civil engineer from Karlsruhe, Germany. "We want to be in the crowd."

Navarro-Valls said John Paul would "almost surely" be buried in the tomb where Pope John XXIII lay before he was brought up onto the main floor of the Basilica.

That pope, who died in 1963, was moved after his 2000 beatification because so many pilgrims wanted to visit his tomb, and the grotto is in a cramped underground space.

In the first meeting Monday, the cardinals took an oath of secrecy, as called for in the Vatican document outlining the procedures following the death of a pope. In the second one, they made their decisions on the funeral rites, Navarro-Valls said. There were 65 cardinals attending.

There had been speculation that the pope might have left orders to be buried in his native Poland, but Navarro-Valls said John Paul "did not show any such wish."