Eyewitness Kathy Sheridan in RomeAt 4am we are looking at a nightmare. In the bone-chilling darkness, tens of thousands of exhausted, bedraggled bodies are already crammed into the Piazza Pasquale Paoli, the entry point to the Altoviti bridge across the Tiber and essential to the plan to get to the Via della Conciliazione leading to St Peter's Square.
Many have only arrived in the city the night before, after travelling thousands of kilometres by bus, train or car, and slept out on the streets in conditions so cold that some needed medical attention.
Now the agony lies in the not knowing. No one knows if we are merely one throng of many seeking to enter Vatican City; if we are first, or last: or even if we are too late to be allowed to enter at all. By 5.30am some Italians begin a slow handclap with shouts of "Aprire!" [ "Open!"]. The Poles are simply too weary to protest.
At 5.45 there is a surge forward. The crowd suddenly comes alive, raises the flags and presses towards the police barrier as an English voice shouts "Take it easy!".
It is another 45 minutes, however, before we are finally delivered. And there the nightmare ends.
A giddily happy canter leads us about two-thirds of the way up the Via della Conciliazione, well within view of St Peter's and its majestic dome gleaming in the morning sun.
Margaret Wyzgwska, a 20-year-old linguistics student from Warsaw, gasps and stares. It's a view she has dreamed of for years. This morning she has come far closer than she thought possible. It's 7am now - three hours to go - and it hardly matters that we are so tightly packed that we can't lift our arms.
But by 7.30, inexplicably, the crowd thins out. There is room to sit down on sheets and sleeping bags. Three kinds of Polish bread and four types of cheese are pressed on this stranger - complete with ketchup - followed by chocolate-coated peanuts and a baby wipe.
Everyone agrees in four different languages that this is fabulous. Radios are tuned to Polish stations where the loved voice of John Paul II comes alive once more.
The mood is relatively festive, in the way that flagging spirits can be lifted by a sense of achievement. The achievement is to have travelled for days without rest, or a wash, or a full meal, from places like Jakarta, Abuja, Rio de Janeiro, Beirut, Mexico City, Cordoba or Warsaw, to be among millions converging on the same destination and to find yourself within a few hundred yards of St Peter's Square and Il Papa.
Sure, we haven't quite made it to the square itself, but the screens will show us all we need.
The screen scaffolding itself has become a place of homage; one bears a huge sign reading "Grazie Papa", a large picture of a vibrant, broadly-smiling John Paul at the start of his reign leaning happily against a Polish doorway, a painting of the Black Madonna on cloth, a drawing of the Pope holding a cross to his forehead and the legend in Polish "We will not forget!"
Meanwhile, there is a world of humanity to observe simply walking past.
Young men and women from Poland's Zakopane region, the mountainous area that John Paul loved and the people on whom he said he could always rely, have turned up in traditional dress - long colourful skirts and elaborately beaded and sequinned waistcoats - to do him proud.
A man clutching a single red rose wrapped in a Polish flag stares mournfully into space. A group processes past holding high two enormous crosses fashioned from rough, plain branches.
Flocks of nuns in extraordinary flowing robes and wimples, laden with rucksacks and plastic bags of possessions, desperately seek out vantage points.
Half a dozen Mexicans in giant gold- and silver-trimmed sombreros, two of them with the name Manolo picked out in sequins on the crown, become a camera magnet.
A smartly-dressed couple walk past carrying inflatable horses which may well be part of some honoured ritual, but are probably just gifts for the kids at home.
As the clock moves closer to 10 the mood - never less than respectful - becomes more charged. For the first time this week the sun has disappeared, leaving a chilly breeze. At last an image of the coffin appears on screen to a round of applause.
People straighten up and prepare for what is undoubtedly for many of them, as surely an ordeal as the funeral of any loved one. The entry of the richly dressed cardinals and bishops presents a sharp contrast to the bedraggled tens of thousands who are witnessing the moment. Some of the dignitaries provoke a bout of low-key catcalls.
A man beside us applauds the King of Spain. "Well, I'm Spanish", he explains, "and the Poles seem to be taking over."
Meanwhile, it has become startlingly evident that getting into the square entails merely a stroll past the holy souvenir shop, one of the few shops in Rome that is not only open, but doing a roaring trade in rosary beads and Jubilee thimbles and fridge magnets of the Pietà for a fiver.
In the square a man wrapped in the Irish Tricolour (the only one in evidence apart from a tiny flag spied earlier) is certain that only a miracle could have facilitated this level of access.
"I wasn't expecting to get anywhere near the Holy Father. I thought it'd be a miracle if I got anywhere in the city of Rome.
"Then I thought it was a miracle to have got as far as the via della Conciliazione. The next thing, here I am in St Peter's Square," says an awed Thomas O'Keeffe, a builder from Ballyhooly, Co Limerick, who carries a green cloth bag containing the flag, a large cross, a jumper and an apple. He has already had his confession heard by a multilingual priest in the middle of the via Conciliazione, he adds, upon which a young Pole politely interrupts to chide us for speaking: "I'm sorry . . . We are praying".
Nonetheless, Thomas is not the only one lost in the wonder of finding himself stumbling upon a virtual ringside view of a papal funeral.
As the Mass proceeds, it is easy to distinguish those who have come to honour from those who have come merely to witness a significant moment in history.
The first withdraw into a poignant sobriety, swallowing hard when Cardinal Ratzinger points to the window from which John Paul made his last public appearance, and comments: "We can be sure that our beloved Pope is standing today at the window of the Father's house, that he sees us and blesses us."
When the screens show a close-up of the shuttered windows of the Papal apartments, many wipe away tears. "Santo! Santo!", roars the crowd as the Cardinal talks about how burying John Paul's remains in the earth "is a seed of immortality".
As representatives from various nationalities and languages step forward to present the gifts and lead the prayers for blessings, the pride and nods of recognition from sections of the crowd are palpable.
Black nuns raise their hands when an African voice is heard from the altar; one of the Manolos clasps a friend as a Mexican voice is heard.
Like any funeral of a loved one who has lived a full life, this one is a throat-catching mix of tears and applause, in this case with an undercurrent of a sense of abandonment and fear of the unknown.
As the ceremonies move to a close, the applause becomes more fevered and the flags are borne ever higher. A young Pole stands high above the crowd on a pile of rucksacks, flying his flag like a rebel on the barricades.
For Poles, John Paul was not just a father figure and a towering moral rebuke to some of their leaders, he was the giant who bestrode the world, who gave them status and made them brave.
A 25-year-old civil engineer who has been out of work for six months holds up his hands and says helplessly: "He was all I knew all my life. Now he is gone and we don't know what to do."
Young Italians launch into their familiar chant of "Gio-vanni Pau-lo". As the bearers lift the coffin, a silence falls and a strangled shout emanates from a man nearby: "Viva il Papa . . . Viva il Papa."
At the door of the Basilica, when the bearers turn the coffin of the man who was once an actor, it is almost like a final bow as the intensity deepens and people clap until their palms hurt.
Even the sceptical noted that the sun came out and the heat returned for a a brief moment as the coffin was finally borne into history, and the great bell tolled its passing.
Under a flag of Wadowice, the birthplace of the Pontiff, the bearers stand stunned and silent.
"He was ours", they say.
But life goes on. As many head dispiritedly for home, just as many sit themselves down in the splendour of St Peter's Square and take out the tinned meat, cheese, crackers, bread and margarine that will be lunch.
Purple-hatted princes of the church glide through the crowd.
Thomas O'Keeffe is almost hugging himself with happiness: "There was no one like him, or ever will be again. He'd really make you proud to be a Catholic. There'll never be a day like today".