Pope to End Holy Year by Looking to Future

VATICAN CITY, Jan. 5 -- Pope John Paul II will end Holy Year 2000 on Saturday by closing the Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica, offering thanks for the Jubilee's achievements and looking to the future of the Roman Catholic Church.

The pope will preside over a simple door-closing ceremony, little changed since it was first performed exactly 500 years earlier, and a solemn Mass and hymn of Te Deum in St. Peter's Square. At the end of the Mass, he will issue the Apostolic Letter "Novo Millennio Ineunte" (Entering the New Millennium).

As is traditional, the ceremony will take place on the church's Feast of the Epiphany, which commemorates the manifestation of Jesus to the Gentile world as represented by the Magi, or three Wise Men, from the East.

Vatican sources said the 80-year-old pontiff may underline his determination to carry the momentum of Holy Year into the future by announcing the next day the names of the prelates he will name to the College of Cardinals at a Consistory expected to be held in February.

Some 50,000 last-minute pilgrims joined a slow-moving line in a rain-swept St. Peter's Square Thursday to enter the basilica through the Holy Door and secure a special Holy Year indulgence carrying remission of temporal punishment for sins.

The last pilgrims will be allowed through the Holy Doors of St. Peter's and Rome's three other major basilicas late Friday. Then workers will begin preparing the doors for the closing ceremonies.

Tens of thousands of faithful waited for hours Friday in St. Peter's Square for their last chance for another 25 years to pass through the basilica's Holy Door. Friday's faithful were far luckier than the thousands who stood the night before in a pouring, cold rain to reach the door in the waning hours of the Holy Year marking the start of Christianity's third millennium.

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