World Tunes In To Pope's Funeral

Large crowds gathered at churches from the Philippines to Poland Friday in a massive global farewell to Pope John Paul II, bowing their heads in prayer and watching live broadcasts of the funeral on large TV screens.

There were 7,000 mourners in Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral, reports CBS News Correspondent Elaine Cobbe, and several hundred outside in the pouring rain where giant screens and loudspeakers retransmitted funeral and 24 hours of prayers and services for the pope.

Karol Wojtyla had long links with France. He studied at the Sorbonne in the late 1940s and lived at the Irish College in Paris on many occasions, working with Polish priests based there until recently. One of his first foreign trips as pope was to Paris where he held a youth rally in the Parc des Princes football stadium. It was so successful he used to ask on later trips elsewhere, "Will there be a Parc des Princes?"

"He was a pope for humanity," said Assemian Omer Alain, a 40-year-old from Ivory Coast who had come to the Sacre Coeur basilica overlooking Paris to pray for the pope. "He was a phenomenon. All religions were the same to him. He made no difference between Christian or Muslim."

Schools and business closed across the country as Poland mourned its national hero.

Up to a million people gathered in a vast field in Krakow, Poland — where the pope was once archbishop — to follow the televised service on large video screens. CBS Newsman Bill Gasperini reports the crowd stretched as far as the eye could see, to a ridge 2-3 miles away. The site was where the pope celebrated several masses on his visits back to Poland, and some Poles consider it almost sacred ground.

In Madrid, Spanish and Vatican flags with black ribbons hung from balconies and shops.

Several thousand Slovaks gathered for an open-air Mass in a Bratislava suburb in the same place where the pontiff celebrated a Mass for 200,000 faithful during his last trip to Slovakia in 2003.

Among the faithful, some of whom held Vatican flags, were Slovak government ministers, including Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda with his wife, Eva.

"I'm very sad that the Holy Father is no longer among us," Dzurinda said. "I am well aware of what he has meant for Slovaks, for myself and my nearest ones."

The funeral was televised on both of Israel's main television stations, reports CBS News Correspondent Robert Berger. The broadcasts also showed many pictures of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and analysts on both stations were positive about his life and relationship with the Jewish people.

Throughout Asia, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs joined Roman Catholics in church services and prayers to honor the pontiff, who is credited with reaching out to other denominations.

In Tokyo, the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, urged people to continue the pontiff's legacy of peace.

"Firstly, we lost a great human being, a leader of a great religion but also one very good human being," the Dalai Lama said. "Now it is important that we must carry all his messages and guidance with us. We must make every effort to fulfill his wishes."

An estimated 1,500 Japanese packed a memorial Mass at St. Mary's Cathedral, some spilling outside under the blazing sun. Mourners — some veiled in black, others dabbing their faces with towels — watched the service on a giant TV screen atop a truck.
A row of white-robed clergymen greeted Crown Prince Naruhito, who will one day as emperor become the head priest of Japan's native Shinto religion, as he pulled up in a black limousine.

Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales called the gathering of the faithful in Asia's most populous Roman Catholic nation a "celebration of life" for John Paul, who endeared himself to Filipinos with two well-received visits, along with prayers in troubled times.

The pope drew massive emotional crowds during his 1981 and 1995 visits. An estimated 4 million people jammed Rizal Park for his Mass for the world's youth in 1995. He was scheduled to return two years ago, but the long voyage was considered too taxing for his frail health.

"He said goodbye, but in the hearts of Filipinos, he still lives on," said Bing Saracarpio, a vendor selling flags and T-shirts bearing the pope's image.

In overwhelmingly Buddhist Sri Lanka, where the pope visited in 1995, the top private TV station ART interrupted regular programming to broadcast the funeral live after receiving hundreds of phoned requests. A special Mass was scheduled at St. Lucia's Cathedral in Colombo.

Some 14,000 people packed into a cricket ground in Adelaide for a memorial service for the pontiff — who last year criticized Australia for its secular trends and warned that attending Mass on Sunday should not be subordinate in a "weekend dominated by such things as entertainment and sport."

In predominantly Muslim Malaysia, more than 4,000 people, including representatives of the Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh communities, attended a memorial Mass late Thursday at St. John's Cathedral in Kuala Lumpur.