Pope John Paul II Dead At 84

After a swift decline in his health over the past several days, Pope John Paul II died at his apartment at the Vatican Saturday. He was 84 years old.

"We all feel like orphans this evening," Undersecretary of State Archbishop Leonardo Sandri told the crowd of 70,000 that had gathered in St. Peter's Square below the pope's still-lighted apartment windows.

The assembled faithful fell into a stunned silence before some people broke out in applause — an Italian tradition in which mourners often clap for important figures. Others wept.

The crowd, which appeared to grow quickly, recited the rosary. A person in the front held a Polish flag in honor of the Polish-born pontiff who led the Roman Catholic Church for the last 26 years.

Prelates asked those in the square to keep silent so they might "accompany the pope in his first steps into heaven."

Later, as bells tolled in mourning, a group of young people sang, "Alleluia, he will rise again," while one of them strummed a guitar.

A Mass was scheduled for St. Peter's Square for Sunday morning.

The pope died at 9:37 p.m. (2:37 p.m. EST) after suffering heart and kidney failure following two hospitalizations in as many months. Just hours earlier, the Vatican said he was in "very serious" condition but had responded to members of the papal household.

The pope's very public death, with unprecedented details and public appearances when he was bent and even drooling, was meant to be part of the message he preached throughout his papacy: All life has value, reports CBS News Correspondent Allen Pizzey.

"Throughout the West, John Paul's witness reminded us of our obligation to build a culture of life in which the strong protect the weak," President Bush said in a televised speech. He ordered flags to half-staff.

The death of a pope triggers a mourning period as well as a gathering of cardinals to elect a successor, in what can be a lengthy process. It culminates with a vote — or up to 30 — in the Sistine Chapel.

Until then,power will be divided among a core group of Vatican officials.

Initial preparations got under way Saturday for the elaborate rituals marking a pope's death, with officials gearing up to accommodate the tens of thousands of pilgrims who were expected to converge on Rome as Pope John Paul II's following the pope's death.

Hospitalized twice last month after breathing crises, and fitted with a breathing tube and a feeding tube, John Paul had become a picture of suffering.

His papacy has been marked by its call to value the aged and to respect the sick, subjects the pope has turned to as he battles Parkinson's disease and crippling knee and hip ailments. The pope also survived a 1981 assassination attempt, when a Turkish gunman shot him in the abdomen.

The next pope will confront a range of challenges, including scientific advances that conflict with Catholic teaching; the decline of religious observance in Europe and North America; an explosion in church membership in the Third World; and a dwindling number of priests in the West.

After a quarter-century of John Paul's strong personality and hands-on management style, some want Vatican officials to stay out of the day-to-day operations of dioceses. Others believe officials in Rome should stay deeply involved to crack down on dissent.

Vatican observers disagree over whether there will be pressure in the conclave to return the papacy to an Italian, or whether they will want to send a signal to the burgeoning ranks of Catholics in the Third World by choosing an African or Latin American candidate.

Born in Poland in 1920 as Karol Wojtyla, John Paul secretly trained for the priesthood under Nazi occupation, lived under Communism, and contributed to the fall of the Iron Curtain by denouncing the oppression of Christians and supporting the Solidarity movement in his homeland.

John Paul unequivocally opposed pre- and extra-marital sex, homosexuality, abortion, and the use of contraception.

The 264th pope battled what he called a "culture of death" in modern society. It made him a hero to those who saw him as their rock in a degenerating world, and a foe to those who felt he was holding back social enlightenment.

"The church cannot be an association of freethinkers," John Paul said.

However, a sex abuse scandal among clergy plunged his church into moral crisis. He summoned U.S. cardinals to the Vatican and told them: "The abuse which has caused this crisis is by every standard wrong and rightly considered a crime by society; it is also an appalling sin in the eyes of God." Critics accused the pope of not acting swiftly enough.

Other critics said that while the pope championed the world's poor, he was not consistent when he rebuked Latin American priests who sought to involve the church politically through the doctrine of "liberation theology."

John Paul was the first pope to publicly ask forgiveness for the Church's past sins - including mistreatment of Jews and other non-believers.

"For the role that each one of us has had, with his behavior, in these evils, contributing to a disfigurement of the face of the Church, we humbly ask forgiveness," said the pontiff on the altar at St. Peter's five years ago, in remarks some hailed as a landmark but others thought fell short of the mark in not specifically mentioning the Holocaust.

He was not shy about anticipating his own death, saying in a "Letter to the Elderly" issued in 1999: "I find great peace in thinking of the time when the Lord will call me: from life to life!"

"When the moment of our definitive 'passage' comes," said the pontiff, "grant that we may face it with serenity, without regret for what we shall leave behind."