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 crimson-robed body had given up and left.

Officials said this morning's line was moving quicker, with the wait dramatically shortened to just a few hours. But they announced that the basilica doors would be shut at 10 p.m., making it likely that the line would be closed later in the day to spare pilgrims too far back from waiting in vain. Yesterday, some in the throng had waited 24 hours to get inside.

"I think it will turn out to be the largest (Christian) pilgrimage in history, and what has made that possible is modern transportation," said the Rev. John Jay Hughes, emeritus professor of history at St. Louis University.

Using a special entrance for VIPs, President Bush viewed the body with his wife, Laura, his father, former President Clinton and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, shortly after the U.S. delegation reached Rome. They knelt in a pew in front of the remains, bowing their heads in prayer, joining a million pilgrims who had filed solemnly through St. Peter's Basilica.

Mourners brave the cold awaiting their turn. Police temporarily cut off the line yesterday after other efforts failed to stop the flow of pilgrims. Diether Endlicher • Associated Press

Text messages were sent over Italian cellular phone lines. Those at the back of the line would wait 24 hours before entering the basilica.

As many as 4 million people are expected to arrive in time for the pope's funeral tomorrow. University campuses and stadiums were opened for people with no place to sleep, bottles of free water and blankets were being distributed, and extra buses and trains were being run.

"This is a very spiritual moment for me," said Mateusz Szymanski, 26, his eyes bloodshot with exhaustion as he stood with two friends at the very rear of the line, after driving all day and all night from Poland. "This man gave himself to the world without reservation. When I think about him, something in my heart breaks. And so I had to come."

To an astonishing degree, the mood was calm and patient, with strangers joining to sing Christian songs. Few disruptions were reported.

The College of Cardinals yesterday set April 18 as the start of its conclave in the Sistine Chapel to choose a successor to John Paul II, a papal election with new rules and new technological challenges.

The Vatican is a keeper of secrets without parallel, but there were questions about whether the deliberations in the conclave — and the name of the new pope — could be kept within the frescoed walls in an era of cell phones and now that the cardinals will be allowed to roam freely around the Vatican.

"They've assured us there are ways to block all communications and conversations," Chicago Cardinal Francis George said.

The severest of punishments — including excommunication and "grave penalties" meted out by the pope himself — await anyone who breaks the sacred oaths of secrecy.

John Paul II set out the penalties in a 1996 document, giving cardinals who will choose his successor a set of detailed guidelines to ensure the centuries-old process of electing a pope is safe in the modern age.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the cardinals would celebrate a morning Mass on April 18, then be sequestered in the Sistine Chapel in the early afternoon for their first ballot.

John Paul's spiritual testament, read yesterday, was a 15-page document written in his native Polish over the course of his pontificate starting in 1979, a year after he was elected. It did not name the mystery cardinal he created in 2003, Navarro-Valls said, ending speculation that a last-minute cardinal might join in the conclave.