ROME – One of the biggest funerals in history will be staged at St. Peter’s Basilica on Friday when Pope John Paul II is laid to rest in the crypt alongside many of his predecessors.

The world’s political elite, including President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, will join religious leaders, royalty, and up to 4 million mourners for an event that will be broadcast live around the world.

The Prince of Wales will represent Queen Elizabeth. Others attending include the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams; the United Nations secretary-general, Kofi Annan, President Chirac, and Mayor Bloomberg.

Snipers will position themselves between the Bernini statues on the roof of colonnades around St. Peter’s Square to protect the 200 dignitaries, and 6,500 police will be on duty.

The formal funeral Mass, with all the pomp and ceremony that the Vatican can muster, will follow three days of the Pope lying in state in the Basilica.

After days of speculation, the date of the funeral was confirmed at the first meeting of the General Congregation, a gathering of all the cardinals in Rome that is held almost daily until the conclave.

The meeting, chaired by the dean of the College of Cardinals and a frontrunner to succeed John Paul II, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, also announced that the pope would be buried beneath the basilica alongside many of his predecessors.

The decision will disappoint millions of Poles who had hoped that his body would be returned to his native land, and some are still pleading for his heart to be buried in his homeland.

The body will be laid to rest after the two-and-a-half-hour funeral service in a special, triple-lined coffin of cypress wood placed in a lead liner contained in an oak casket.

The coffin, which will bear a bronze plaque recording the dates of the pope’s reign, will be lowered into a marble sarcophagus.

If the funeral service follows precedent and if the weather is fine, it is likely to be held in the open air to accommodate the huge crowds expected to attend. The numbers are likely to dwarf the 50,000 who came to the last rites of John Paul I in 1978.

Most members of the College of Cardinals will proceed into the service in order of seniority, and the lead celebrant will be Cardinal Ratzinger.

The liturgy will be a conventional funeral Mass but with unique elements of papal protocol. The Swiss guards will kneel for the consecration of the host, dipping their halberds with their right hand and saluting with their left.

The Mass will end with the pope’s coffin being carried into the basilica by black-suited pallbearers to the sound of a 10-ton funeral bell.

The Vatican’s chief spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, said yesterday that the cardinals had met twice in the Bologna Hall in the papal palace, the first time to take an oath to keep all the details of the conclave secret.

Under the rules, which were formulated by John Paul II in 1996, the cardinals face automatic excommunication if they divulge information about the papal election.

The cardinals swear to “maintain rigorous secrecy with regard to all matters in any way related to the election of the Roman Pontiff or those which, by their very nature, during the vacancy of the Apostolic See, call for the same secrecy.”

Each individual cardinal then says: “And I so promise, pledge, and swear.” Then he places his hand on the Gospel and adds: “So help me God and these Holy Gospels which I now touch with my hand.”

The cardinals also appointed a commission of senior cardinals to prepare the Casa Santa Marta, the multimillion-pound hostel where the members of the College stay during the conclave, and the Sistine Chapel, where the voting takes place.

Once the conclave – literally meaning under lock and key – is under way, the cardinals are completely isolated and are forbidden to make contact with the outside world by any means except in emergencies. The rooms and the chapel are swept for electronic listening devices.

Two prominent clerics known for their theological gravitas will be selected to deliver addresses to all the cardinals on the state of the Church, setting the tone for the election.

It will be the first time that the cardinals will stay in relative luxury. In previous conclaves, they have been forced to suffer cramped and uncomfortable quarters in the Apostolic Palace.

The late Cardinal Hume once complained that his bed was so short that his feet protruded from the end.