American presidents past and present fly into Rome

ROME - American presidents past and present flew into Rome last night, as an unprecedented gathering of world leaders began to assemble for Pope John Paul II's funeral on Friday.

President George W. Bush was accompanied by his wife Laura, his father ex-President Bush snr and ex-President Bill Clinton.

Ex-president Jimmy Carter had also been hoping to attend but as national delegations were restricted to five people each, there was no room for him at the service, which will take place at the Basilica in St Peter's Square.

President Bush will find himself seated close to President Khatami of Iran - designated an "Axis of Evil" state - for the ceremony. That two such diverse leaders should be obliged to share the same space is one indication of the huge pull of Friday's event.

Bush will be the first incumbent president to attend the funeral of a pope. Likewise Dr Rowan Williams will be the first head of the Anglican church to attend. With him from Britain will be Tony Blair, the prime minister, and Prince Charles.

President Bush's first, top-secret appointment in Rome, Italian media reported, was at St Peter's basilica at midnight, where he prayed before the corpse of the man who ruled the Catholic church for more than 26 years and who clashed vigorously with him over the Iraq war.

Tonight the American president and his wife will dine with Silvio Berlusconi, still licking his wounds after an electoral drubbing earlier in the week. At 10pm last night (8am today NZ time), it was announced that the queue for members of the public to view the body of the Pope had been closed. The last in line faced a 24-hour wait.

Yesterday the Vatican announced that the Conclave, the congress of cardinals at which they elect the next pope, will begin on Monday 18th April.

During the ten days that intervene between the funeral and the start of the Conclave, the 116-odd voting cardinals, all those under 80 who are fit enough to attend, are discouraged from talking about the election as they prepare themselves spiritually to be guided in their counsels and voting by the Holy Spirit, as the Church teaches.

In the interim, however, they are free to say what they want to whom they want - though none have so far been drawn on specifics about their voting intentions during the Conclave.

Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney and the only cardinal from Australia, stuck his neck out further than most yesterday when he said that he believed the next pope would be a conservative on doctrine, as John Paul was.

He said that the Polish pope's attachment to traditional Church teaching had given Catholics "a strong sense of security", and that he hoped "we'll have the same sense of security with the next pope."

Brazil's Cardinal Serafim Fernandes de Araujo, Archbishop of Belo Horizonte, said the next pope should address "the problems of the poor, of a poor, sick Africa, of the Third World, of a world without peace...What's certain is that it will not be possible to have another John Paul II. He's unrepeatable."

Cardinal Cormack Murphy O'Connor, Archbishop of Westminster and head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, said of the late pope's legacy: "What this pope has left cannot but continue. I'd be unhappy if it all faded. The primacy of a moral voice in the world must continue."

Of the death of John Paul he said, "There's a sense of affection and loss of this great man...He's part of the family. But also there's a sense of completion: it was time that the pope went to his reward."

The Vatican revealed that the pope's will says nothing about the identity of a mysterious, secret or "in pectore" cardinal.

Popes throughout the ages have sometimes kept one or more cardinals' identities a secret, often for political reasons. There had been speculation that the secret cardinal might be Msgr Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun, bishop of Hong Kong, but yesterday the bishop denied it.

The other possibility is the pope's faithful secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwsz. But in the absence of any written proof, the secret may well die with John Paul.

- INDEPENDENT