KRAKOW, Poland - As the Vatican on Monday set a date for John Paul II's funeral, many of his compatriots were still hoping the pope's heart, seen by Catholics as the seat of the soul, would be brought home to rest at Wawel Castle alongside those of Poland's monarchs.
"That would be, for us, the most precious treasure," said Father Janusz Bielanski, canon at Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, the southern city where Karol Wojtyla entered the priesthood and spent 40 years of his adult life.
But Roman Catholic leaders in Poland have insisted their country's most beloved and revered son should rest in peace -- and in one piece -- in Rome, dampening the hopes of Bielanski and others.
"I spoke with Cardinal Franciszek Macharski and he put me in my place," Bielanski said Monday.
"He said: 'A man is buried in one piece -- with his feet, his hands, and without any surgical intervention'."
Archbishop of Gdansk, Monsignor Tadeusz Goclowski explained the whys and wherefores of where the pope should be buried by saying Sunday: "The Church is universal. A man who becomes pope belongs to the universal Church."
But he tempered his explanation of why the pope should be buried at St Peter's basilica in Rome by saying that, personally, he would have preferred otherwise.
The basilica is said be built on the site where St Peter, one of the apostles of Jesus and considered the first pope, was crucified and buried. Many popes are buried there.
But a pontiff can ask in his will to be buried elsewhere, such as in his homeland.
On Monday the Vatican said that John Paul II had left no instructions concerning his burial, and that he would be buried on Friday in the Vatican, in line with tradition.
"We would have liked for the pope to be buried in Poland, but seeing as that isn't possible, we would like for his heart, at least, to have the cathedral as its final resting place," a couple told AFP on Wawel hill in central Krakow.
It was in Wawel cathedral that a newly ordained Karol Wojtyla, the pope's given name, celebrated his first mass in 1946, and as cardinal of Krakow, from 1963 to the year of his election to the papacy in 1978, he often officiated at mass in the cathedral.
A discussion forum has been launched on the issue on Poland's main Internet portal, www.onet.pl, where one participant said: "He was not only a great pope but also a great Pole, and I feel his heart should be returned to the land of his birth."
But not everyone is in favour of the idea, and some are horrified at the very idea of cutting open the pope to take out his heart.
"The heart of John Paul II belongs to the entire world," said one forum participant.
"It's absurd to extract a man's heart from his body. It's sick. The pope's heart belongs in the body in which it beat for 85 years," said another Internet chatter.
"Don't rip out his heart, which in any case is in Poland," wrote another.
The hearts of other famous Poles, from composer Frederick Chopin to Nobel literature laureate Wladyslaw Reymont to independence hero, marshal Jozef Pilsudski, have been taken from their bodies to lie at rest elsewhere.
The tradition of removing the heart of the deceased has been practised through time, especially among Europe's monarchies.
Austria's Hapsburg royal family observed the tradition until the 19th century.
According to German historian Marie-Louise von Plessen, author of "Von ganzem Herzen" (From the whole heart), a book on the symbolism of the vital organ, the heart was considered by the Church as the seat of the soul.
Among monarchs, she explains, the heart was extracted to preserve it and allow it to transfer the decomposed body to the after-life.
But although many Poles consider that John Paul II achieved sainthood in his lifetime, and on Monday, the influential Gazeta Wyborcza referred to him as "the king we always dreamed of", his body and the seat of his soul are likely to rest in peace at the Vatican.
04/04/2005 13:46 GMT