By mid-morning, the scene in the square was quiet and subdued perhaps due to the chilly gray skies and cumulative lack of sleep unlike the rollicking party atmosphere of John Paul's May 2011 beatification when bands of young people sang and danced in the hours before the Mass.
Pope Benedict had promised to remain “hidden from the world” after resigning last year, but Pope Francis has coaxed him out of retirement and urged him to take part in the public life of the church.
In a dress rehearsal of sorts, Pope Benedict attended the February ceremony in which Pope Francis installed 19 new cardinals. But celebrating Mass together with Pope Francis was something else entirely, a first for the 2,000-year-old institution and a reflection of Pope Francis' desire to show the continuity in the papacy, despite different personalities, priorities and politics.
Pope John XIII, who reigned from 1958-1963, is a hero to liberal Catholics for having convened the Second Vatican Council. The meetings brought the church into the modern era by allowing Mass to be celebrated in local languages rather than Latin and by encouraging greater dialogue with people of other faiths, particularly Jews.
During his quarter-century papacy from 1978-2005, Pope John Paul II helped topple communism through his support of Poland's Solidarity movement. His globe-trotting papacy and launch of the wildly popular World Youth Days invigorated a new generation of Catholics, while his defense of core church teaching heartened conservatives after the turbulent 1960s.
