He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble.

President George W. Bush and Laura Bush attend funeral services Friday, April 8, 2005, for the late Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square. The funeral is being called the largest of its kind in modern history. White House Photo by Eric Draper



An American flag flies high among the throng of mourners inside St. Peter's square Friday, April 8, 2005, as thousands attend funeral mass for Pope John Paul II, who died April 2 at the age of 84. White House Photo by Eric Draper


VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The poor and powerful joined in a final farewell to Pope John Paul Friday at a momentous Vatican funeral watched by hundreds of millions of people across the world he had traveled.

Flags and banners, many from the Pope's native Poland, bobbed in the ocean of humanity that stretched from St. Peter's Square for as far as the eye could see.

"Santo subito" (Make him a saint immediately), pilgrims chanted in Italian, holding up the open-air funeral Mass several times in an outpouring of emotion for a giant of the 20th century.

"We can be sure that our beloved Pope is standing today at the window of the Father's house, that he sees us and blesses us," Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger told hundreds of thousands of people packed into the windswept square.

To the sound of choirs singing in Latin, the tolling of a giant bell and a seemingly endless wave of applause, 12 pall bearers carried away John Paul's simple cypress-wood coffin from the steps of St. Peter's Basilica as the Mass ended.

It was turned for one last time to face the square where the world's third-longest serving pope had said thousands of Masses and was then taken down to the crypt below for burial, encased in two further caskets.

Millions of Catholics who could not get to Italy instead bid farewell to the Pope in myriad services around the globe.

"It is almost like being there in Rome," said Georgina Vega, a primary school teacher, at a Mass in the Basilica de Guadalupe, Mexico's holiest shrine. "Being here with a candle, sharing the warmth with others, transports me there."

But the funeral went well beyond Catholicism. It was watched in mainly Muslim Egypt, in Jewish Israel and even in Iran, where some ignored a ban on satellite dishes.

"This is an important historical event. I want to be part of the world and watch it," said Arezu, a 38-year-old Shi'ite Muslim teacher in Tehran who declined to give her full name.

LAST JOURNEY SHORTEST

The last journey of a man who traveled the equivalent of 30 times the circumference of the earth during his reign, was his shortest -- a few hundred meters (yards) from
church to crypt.

Nearly 7 hours after the elaborate funeral rites had started, John Paul was laid to
rest under the ground in an alcove of the crypt. It was 2:20 p.m. (1220 GMT).

Five kings, six queens and at least 70 presidents and prime ministers attended the funeral service, paying homage to a Pope who helped bring down the Iron Curtain, urged unity between faiths and stamped a strict orthodoxy on his own Church.

Among 2,500 dignitaries of all faiths and races who attended were President Bush, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, Britain's Prince Charles and various Middle East leaders.

But Beata Bilyk, an 18-year-old pilgrim from Poland, spoke for an entire nation: "Our whole world will be different now. I don't know what we will do without him to lead us."

In Poland itself, sirens wailed and church bells tolled to mark the start of the funeral and more than 800,000 gathered in the Blonie meadows in Krakow -- the southern Polish city where Karol Wojtyla served as archbishop before becoming Pope.

The Vatican funeral capped a week that saw millions of faithful queue for up to 15 hours to file past his body.

The first non-Italian pope in 455 years died last Saturday after a decade of suffering and sickness, unleashing an outpouring of grief within the Roman Catholic Church and beyond.

PEACE IN DEATH

The funeral even brought a hint of the reconciliation between nations that John Paul championed.

Israeli President Moshe Katsav said he shook hands with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, a country formally at war with Israel, and spoke to President Mohammad Khatami of Iran, which is also deeply hostile to the Jewish state.

Earlier, Khatami told Corriere della Sera newspaper in an interview: "Maybe today will make us hope of a future of peace, not of conflict and hatred."
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He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8