More from from Rome and beyond

• BASILICA REOPENS TO PILGRIMS | 7:11 a.m. ET, April 7

Police reopened St. Peter's Basilica and the huge line of pilgrims leading to it Thursday, giving the faithful a final chance to pay respects to Pope John Paul II. Thousands of Poles held aloft red-and-white Polish flags, adding a shimmering stripe of color to the procession.

Authorities had closed the line Wednesday night as officials rushed to make last-minute preparations for the pope's funeral on Friday, which was drawing leaders from more than 100 countries.

They also closed the basilica for a few hours overnight for cleaning.

By the time the basilica and line reopened, many who had waited hours for a chance to spend a few seconds briefly viewing the pope's body had given up and left.

• VIRTUAL TRIBUTES TO POPE | 5:52 a.m. ET

Pope John Paul did not like computers, never had a cell phone and wrote everything by hand, but his death is being mourned in a most 21st-century way with weblogs and SMSs.

"You knew in your heart that your death would spark peace among us," read a blog entry from Michele Martini, 24. "I'm just sorry that we only paid you half as much attention in your life as we have in your death."

MTV Italia invited viewers to send in text messages about the Pope which scrolled across the bottom of a screen unusually void of scantily clad dancers and sexual innuendo.

"TVB Papa," wrote one MTV viewer — common SMS shorthand for "ti voglio bene" (I love you). Another read "6 (sei) un grande. K (che) triste siamo" or "You're fantastic. How sad we are."

In life, the Pope wrote his encyclicals by hand in Polish and left his aides to transfer them onto computers. In death, people around the world leaned on their laptops to muse over how much the Pope and his death meant to them.

"How extraordinary it is that people he never met, spoke with or touched are bawling over his death as if their own grandfather has died," wrote Becky on http://discardedthought.blogspot.com.

"For some inexplicable reason, the death of the Pope feels like the Church is calling me home, like I need to go back into her arms and share my grief with my community," she said.

A Mexican site http://visor.linuxreal.org included a chat room discussing the hypocrisy of people openly mourning the Pope but blatantly behaving in ways that flout his moral teaching.

"I find it deeply sad to see how man has become a social parasite, joining in with everybody else for their own pleasure and comfort but with no integrity," the site manager wrote.

But it was perhaps old-fashioned pencil and paper that conveyed most poignantly the immense impact the Pope had on the world — a picture drawn by 5-year-old Francesca and left in St. Peter's Square.

It showed the Pope dressed in white waving from the same apartment window from which he used to bless pilgrims in the square below. Underneath Francesca had drawn her family in bright colors, a speech bubble coming from their mouths saying: "Ciao Papissimo."

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