Bush Pays Respects To Pope

President Bush and two of his predecessors are joining other world leaders in paying a final tribute to Pope John Paul II, whose papacy spanned the terms of five American presidents.

Bush led a small U.S. delegation that included former President Clinton and Bush's father, the first President Bush, the president's wife Laura, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
"What a great man," Bush, the first sitting president to attend papal burial rites, said of John Paul II ahead of his visit.

"It will be my honor to represent our country in a ceremony marking a remarkable life, a person who stood for freedom and human dignity," he told reporters after a Cabinet meeting Tuesday.

The group knelt in a pew, spending about five minutes viewing the pope's remains. They left without comment.

The former President Bush told reporters traveling with the delegation aboard Air Force One that the pope "was unforgettable."

Hundreds of thousands of people have viewed the pope's remains since Monday. But when Bush and the delegation arrived, Vatican officials escorted the group in, foregoing the day-long wait other mourners suffered.

Pilgrims continued to flock to St. Peter's Square, jamming up streets to wait in line to view Pope John Paul II's body. Meanwhile, the College of Cardinals set April 18 as the date for the historic start of the conclave to elect his successor.

As it stands now, there's a 24-hour wait to see the pope's body. And Italian officials are asking people to stop lining up.

Overwhelmed Italian officials said they will cut off the line, which snaked down a wide boulevard, through ancient alleyways and onto a bridge, on Wednesday evening.

Clinton, talking separately with reporters on the plane, said the pope had demonstrated support for NATO actions to end genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo.

He said he had met "two great popes" in his lifetime, John Paul II and John XXIII. Clinton said he recognized that John Paul "may have had a mixed legacy," but he called him a man with a great feel for human dignity.

And, Clinton said, noting the throngs the pope would consistently draw, said, "The man knows how to build a crowd."

Former President Carter had hoped to go as well, but backed off when told the Vatican had limited the official delegation to five "and there were also others who were eager to attend," said Jon Moore, a spokesman for the Carter Center in Atlanta.

A Senate delegation of 14 will be led by Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. A House delegation of about two dozen members also was going. It was to be led by Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., but he underwent surgery for kidney stones and didn't make the trip.

Although Bush and the pope shared some conservative social views, they disagreed over the death penalty and the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

When they last met in June 2004, Bush gave the pope the Presidential Medal of Freedom, this country's highest civilian award.

Meanwhile, the civil defense department was flashing messages on highway panels and sending out text messages on cell phones to warn people of the closure Wednesday evening, which will allow officials to clear the basilica on time and prepare it for Friday's funeral, spokesman Luca Spoletini said.

Before St. Peter's closes to the public, the brother of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who shot and seriously wounded Pope John Paul II in 1981, plans to attend the pontiff's funeral, the gunman's lawyer said Wednesday.

Adnan Agca flew to Germany and plans to travel to Italy in time for the papal funeral on Friday, said the gunman's lawyer, Mustafa Demirbag. He would not say whether Agca left for Germany on Tuesday or Wednesday, but said his travel was arranged by a German television station, which he would not name.

"He said he was planning to travel to Italy from Germany to attend the funeral," Demirbag said.

Mehmet Ali Agca, who is in an Istanbul prison, petitioned Turkish authorities earlier this week to attend the funeral but was turned down on Tuesday.

In Vatican City, many people waited a dozen hours in line during the chilly overnight hours, wrapped in thick brown blankets provided by civil defense authorities.

One million people are believed to have waited to see the body Monday and yesterday. The line into St. Peter's Basilica now stretches onto a bridge across the Tiber River, after winding through ancient alleyways.

The shuffling line never stops, reports CBS News Correspondent Allen Pizzey. By the time the public viewing has ended some time tomorrow, it is estimated that as many as two million people will have paid their respects. Then it will be the turn of the V.I.P.S.

Calculations by the Italian civil protection department say people are filing through the basilica at a rate of about 15,000 to 18,000 people per hour.

Also on Wednesday, the cardinals continued to make final arrangements for Friday's funeral that is expected to draw millions of pilgrims and world leaders to Rome.

The decision on the date of the conclave came after the cardinals read John Paul's spiritual testament during a pre-conclave meeting, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said, adding that the text would be released on Thursday.

Navarro-Valls said the cardinals would celebrate a morning Mass on April 18, then be sequestered in the Sistine Chapel in the early afternoon to start the conclave.

According to church law, prelates are expected to hold at least one ballot on the first day of a conclave. If no one gets the required two-thirds majority after about 12 days, cardinals may change procedure and elect the pope by simple majority.

The date was set on the third day of preparatory meetings of cardinals who have converged on Rome ahead of Friday's funeral and burial of John Paul.

John Paul's spiritual testament, read Wednesday, was a 15-page document written in his native Polish over the course of his pontificate starting in 1979, a year after he was elected.

It did not name the mystery cardinal he created in 2003, Navarro-Valls said, ending speculation that a last-minute cardinal might join in the April 18 start of the conclave.

John Paul, who died on Saturday at 84 after a 26-year term as the leader of the world's 1 billion Roman Catholics, created the "in pectore" or "in the heart" cardinal in his last consistory. The formula is used when the pope wants to name a cardinal from a country where the church is oppressed. Some observers said the cardinal might be a prelate from China, where the authorities only recognize a state-sanctioned church.

Copies of John Paul's testament will be released in Polish and an Italian translation, Navarro-Valls said.

Chicago Cardinal Francis George told CNN the document was a "very, very moving, spiritual testament of a man who lived with the Lord."

The number of cardinal electors under 80 and thus eligible to vote is 117, but only 116 will enter the conclave after the Philippines Embassy to the Holy See confirmed that Cardinal Jaime Sin, 76, was too ill to attend. Sin had been one of only three cardinal electors who also took part in the 1978 conclave to elect John Paul.

Navarro-Valls ruled out that the late pope's body might be brought to St. John Lateran basilica, across Rome, before it is buried on Friday, as was done for Pope Pius XII when he died in 1958.

The spokesman also said that with such crowds already converging on Rome, the Vatican could not meet the requests — "by Romans and non-Romans" alike — for a viewing at what is Rome's cathedral. Instead, John Paul will be buried immediately after the funeral in the grotto under St. Peter's Basilica, he said.

Giant television screens, however, will be set up at St. John Lateran, so that crowds who gather there will be able to view the funeral proceedings, he said.

The crush of pilgrims on the road leading to the Vatican will rise sharply when an expected 2 million Poles arrive in Rome for Friday's funeral.

Italian Cardinal Pio Laghi told reporters the scene was like a cloud, "but it is a cloud that is luminous and full of life."

Italy was calling in extra police to the capital and planned to seal off much of the Eternal City on Friday to protect a VIP contingent that will include President Bush, French President Jacques Chirac, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the presidents of Syria and Iran, among other heads of state.

John Paul made his wish known "to be buried in the ground," said Archbishop Piero Marini, a longtime close aide as papal master of ceremonies.

Marini said John Paul would be buried with a white silk veil on his face, his body clad in liturgical vestments and the white miter. Keeping with tradition, his remains will be placed inside three coffins — wood, zinc and wood — a design meant to slow down the decomposition process.

A small bag of commemorative medals issued over the course of his pontificate, as well as a sealed document featuring a brief description in Latin of John Paul's life, will be buried with him, Marini said.

He said Polish wishes that soil from the pope's native country would be placed in the coffin will go unfulfilled.