WARSAW, Poland — A trumpet sounded a mournful tone at 9:37 p.m. Friday, marking the minute five years ago when Poland’s revered native son Pope John Paul II died.
Believers held commemorations of the pope amid Good Friday observances. Singing hymns in torch light, they followed a group of men who carried an enormous cross in a Way of the Cross procession.
“It was a great pope we had, and it’s important to pay homage to him,” said Barbara Pelka, 69, one of thousands who turned out in the rain for the ceremony. “This is our tradition; this is what we should be doing.”
The cross was then erected at Pilsudski Square, where John Paul, as the newly elected pope in 1979, delivered a Mass in which he subtly challenged the communist leadership and inspired the anti-communist movement that eventually helped defeat communism across Eastern Europe.
Others rose before dawn to gather at the pilgrimage site of Kalwaria Zebrzydowska in southern Poland for a reenactment of Christ’s death, joined by Stanislaw Dziwisz, the Krakow archbishop who was John Paul’s closest friend. The Associated Press
