Prayers - Page 2

From East to West, from Washington to Wadowice, from Paris to Pakistan, Catholic faithful around the world offered prayers for Pope John Paul II.

In John Paul's homeland of Poland, the faithful prayed for the pontiff through the night in St. Mary's church in Wadowice, the town where he was born.

At a noon mass in the basilica, Rev. Krzysztof Glowka told a packed church "we are here to be with John Paul in his agony, to experience, together with him, this great mystery of life that is death."

In nearby Krakow, a huge group congregated outside the window in the Krakow Curia where then-Archbishop Karol Wojtyla lived before becoming Pope.

"I walked past there just a short time ago and it's amazing that you can be in a place with hundreds of people and not hear a thing," CTV's Janis Mackey Frayer reported from Krakow, hours before John Paul's death was announced.

"This has been the longest morning for me in my entire life," said Jadwiga Byrska, 42, who had been at the square for hours.

'In God's hands'

In particular, many Poles remember how he inspired people to combat communism, which collapsed in 1989 and was certainly the catalyst for changes across Eastern Europe.

One year into his papacy, John Paul visited Warsaw and ended mass with a prayer for the Holy Spirit to "renew the face of the Earth," words that became a rallying cry.

Lech Walesa, founder of the Solidarity movement, told The Associated Press the Pope's words made all the difference.

"Fifty per cent of the collapse of communism is his doing," Walesa said Friday.

In Ottawa, Prime Minister Paul Martin praised the Pope on Friday for his leadership and his faith.

"For over a quarter of a century the Pope has prayed for all of us, and the time has come for all of us to pray for him," Martin said.

In his weekly radio address on Saturday, U.S. President George Bush said he and his wife, Laura, were praying for John Paul.

Faithful gather

In Moscow, Russians attended an early morning mass. And in Jerusalem, the faithful gathered at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

In Cologne, Germany, some 1,500 people gathered at the famous 13th-century Gothic cathedral.

In Croatia, President Stipe Mesic cancelled a trip so he could monitor news about the Pope, as people flocked to churches.

At Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, worshippers lit candles beneath a photo of the Pope. It was a similar scene at Vienna's landmark St. Stephen's Cathedral and in London's Westminster Cathedral.

In Pakistan, a mainly Muslim country that John Paul visited in 1981, children lit candles as their tearful teachers and many others gathered at a Roman Catholic Church in the central city of Multan to pray.

The Pope was front-page news across much of Asia but not in China, where the state-run media ignored it.

In another communist country, Cuba, authorities allowed the Church leader there, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, to make a rare statement on television.

"A great man is dying," he said in the six-minute address. "This is a man who has carried the moral weight of the world for 26 years... turning himself into the only moral reference for humanity in recent years of wars and difficulties."

Alfred Donath, the head of the Swiss Confederation of Hebrew Congregations, praised John Paul II as an "excellent" pope.

"He worked to bring Jews and the Catholic Church closer together."

Hafid Ouardiri, spokesman for the Geneva mosque, said Muslims would remember the Pope's efforts "for peace and dialogue among communities."

But he also added: "It seems to us that there was a personality cult surrounding Jean Paul II that was close to idolatry, which for a Muslim is a sin. The Pope has taken too big a place compared to the church, and that's damaged him."