Paradox in youth's show of support

They don't go to church, many may not even believe in God and it is highly unlikely they observe John Paul II's stipulations about birth control.

But the young people of Rome have poured into St Peter's Square in their thousands, "to render homage to the pontiff", as a student in shades and a "Mind the Gap" T-shirt put it with quaint formality.

As he lay dying, the Great Communicator got a message out, addressed, press spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said, to the young people in the square. "I have looked for you. Now you have come to me. And I thank you."

Outside in the spring sunshine, the lad in T-shirt and jeans with headphones draped over his ears, Piero Balzoni, 24, repaid the compliment.

"Look around you, most of the people in the piazza are young," he said. "We've been here since Thursday evening. Of course we're not here all the time, but basically we've been here since then. He touches everybody.

"No, we don't go to church, neither do our parents, except at Christmas and Easter. But that's not the point."

It's a paradox, this thing about the Pope and youth.

Here was this intensely conservative figure, who had had Catholicism's liberals grinding their teeth down to the stumps for more than two decades. He would probably have abolished the Renaissance and the Enlightenment if he could.

But young people, even those with no strong faith, feel a deep affinity for him. They have known no other Pope, have no other image in their minds of the head of the Catholic Church than Karol Wojtyla. Tens of thousands of young people in Italy and beyond are taking his death very personally. It is like being orphaned.

"I don't think of him as a conservative," said Alessandro de Marinis, a 24-year-old student. "He was a great innovator in the relations of church and society.

"He apologised to other faiths for the bad things others before him had done. He fought against every ideological extreme.

"He was always for peace and freedom. And he's the only Pope we've known."

Messages were scribbled across a poster for International Youth Day, the annual event that he invented.

"I grew up with you," said one.

"I love you. Please keep praying to the Lord for us and for the faith of the world."

"Just like my mum is the only mother I've known, you are the only Pope I've ever known. No one could ever replace you. Find peace."

- INDEPENDENT