Aide: Pope Was Aware of Crowd While Dying

John Paul II's Aide Says Pontiff Was Aware of Crowd in St. Peter's Square As He Was Dying

As he lay dying, Pope John Paul II was aware of the presence of the crowd in St. Peter's Square below his apartment window and calmly viewed death as a "passage from one room to another," his longtime secretary said in an interview broadcast Friday night.
"He heard everything. He heard the square, he heard the prayer, the presence of the young people. The Holy Father heard, because he was conscious right to the end, almost to the end, even the last day," Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz told private Italian Canale 5's TG5 news in an interview in Krakow, Poland, where he will be installed as archbishop on Saturday...