PolandCannon roared, sirens wailed and church bells rang in Poland where millions of people prayed and wept for Pope John Paul, their greatest native son and spiritual leader.
Poles gathered at churches and open-air Masses, where giant screens showed the Vatican funeral service, to bid farewell to a man who inspired their fight against communism and pushed them towards mainstream Europe.
Some 800,000 mourners gathered at the Blonie public meadows in Krakow - the southern Polish city where Karol Wojtyla served as archbishop before becoming Pope in 1978. It was also where he held his last Mass on Polish soil three years ago.
"We have to understand John Paul has gone but remains with us," said Dominik Talar (30), standing in a solemn crowd of worshippers. "Even though my eyes are filled with tears I feel a strange strength inside me which says: 'I will manage'."
The chair in which the Pope sat during his last Mass in Poland, in which almost three million Poles took part, stood empty on a makeshift altar, decorated with a black ribbon.
In a break with a centuries-old tradition, trumpeters who sound the same call hourly from a church tower in Krakow's central square, would begin yesterday playing a religious melody loved by the Pope each day at 10pm for an indefinite period.
In Warsaw, the military rolled out six cannon for a farewell gun salute that shook the same square where the Pope inspired Poles to stand up to their communist rulers in 1979.
Flags hung from windows and adorned taxis and buses during the six days of mourning culminating in a public holiday yesterday, while the Pope's homilies and personal remarks to his compatriots were aired repeatedly on television.
Hundreds of thousands attended Mass across Poland and streets named after Pope John Paul were again lit up with votive lamps. At 9.37pm , the time of his death last Saturday, Poles planned to turn off all lights for five minutes.
Danuta Michalowska, a childhood friend of Karol Wojtyla, watched the funeral in near silence in her Krakow home, recalling the last letter she received from the ailing pontiff last month. "He was already very ill, but still made the effort to confirm his spiritual bond with me. He asked me to pray for him during his illness. . . Those words have been ingrained in my soul," she said.
In the Pope's beloved Tatra mountains, where Karol Wojtyla used to hike and go on retreats in his youth, people took part in an outdoor Mass held at Morskie Oko Lake, still frozen after the long winter.
The Pope has an iconic status in Poland and other central European nations for helping them shake off communism and return to democracy after half a century of domination by Moscow. He gave Poles more self-confidence and brought them international recognition. After the peaceful 1989 revolution, he actively pushed Poland towards EU membership and helped the country find reconciliation with the Jews.
Fr Adam Boniecki, editor of an influential Catholic weekly, said John Paul had help change many things from the Poles' approach to Jews to the way the papacy is seen, but that now the nation had to learn to live without their moral guide.
"Our Vatican umbrella has been taken down. We are now adults and must carry on with what we have learnt," he told the Polsat television station from Rome.