«I was in the square with the camera towards the Basilica of San Pietro for the news services. It was known that the Pope was sick, even if we didn’t expect he died just that evening. I made an opening connection and one at the end of the TG1 and then I was intervening in Porta a Porta with Bruno Vespa for an episode entirely dedicated to John Paul II. At one point the words of Cardinal Sandri, a substitute for state e The announcement of death is done practically live, at 9.37 pm “. Fabio Zavattaro, Rai Vaticanist historian recalls “as I believe everyone, those words of the substitute state:” Our beloved Pope has returned to his father’s house “. From that moment I began to tell without stopping more. People signed in the square. There was already a lot of crowd who recited the Rosary and who wanted to know how the Pope was, but when the news of the death came in many who began to run towards Sa Pietro ». Telling those moments “it was not easy. There was emotion, but also the need not to say trivial things. And then many wanted to know from me what was going on even while I was in connection. There the police gave me a hand to keep people away to make me work ». A direct that begins without ending. «We had the headquarters in Borgo Sant’Angelo e I practically not returned home. You could no longer go out with the machines or with the scooter because the crowd was so numerous that you risked investing someone. In each edition of the TG there was something new to tellmany stories, many faces, many groups that prayed or sang for the Pope. Some arrived even with the curtains, others who slept on the sidewalks, in the cars parked in the second and third row for days and days. A crowd as it had never been seen previously for anyone. Not only San Pietro and via della Conciliazione, but also Piazza Risorgimento, via Vitelleschi, all the roads and crossbar around were full ».
The journalist also recalls “extreme composure. When the body was exhibited in the Basilica, people made rows of several hours without complaining, in prayer. Also 12, 13 hours standing in order to give the extreme greeting to the Pontiff. Everyone realized that it was a historical event, that a pope had been greeting that he had changed the story. He climbed to the papal throne in full iron curtain and then with the collapsed Berlin wall, but also with the attack on the twin towers. The world had changed in these 27 years». A crowd that thinks only after the celebration of the funeral. «Another very difficult direct. Full of memories, of sensations. We were equipped to collect the voices from the square. I remember a great emotion, also because I had followed his travels, his pontificate. It was difficult to hold back the emotion. Who was personal and collective. All eyes were focused there, in the center of the churchyard. The clothes of the celebrants, including those of Ratzinger who would have been his successor, moved agitated by a wind that spiracked very strong. I still impressed in memory this Gospel, laid on the coffin, which the wind browsed. The pages agitated and a certain point the book closed almost as if to say:. “A pontificate ended, but a world has also ended.”
