"This pope will have a place in history," Giancarlo Zizola, an Italian Vatican expert, said Saturday after his death.

Before its publication, many Vatican experts had predicted that the encyclical would condemn New Age philosophy.

However, one Vatican expert said that by tradition, the cardinals had no choice but to select Cardinal Law to preside at one of the nine funeral Masses.

"Wojtyla became the church himself, people identified him with it," said Pietro Scoppola, an Italian Vatican expert, using John Paul's name before he became pope.

His evident weariness and the decline in activity have fostered what one Vatican expert recently described as a "fin de regime" atmosphere at the Vatican.

Most Vatican experts expect the Pope to issue a pastoral letter sometime before the year 2000, in which he will atone for a range of sins including anti-Semitism.

Vatican experts also have kept a sharp eye on his clothes - for hints not just about the papacy but the man himself.

Sandro Magister, a Vatican expert who the cardinal writes for L'Espresso magazine, said the cardinal could unite conservatives and liberals.

Vatican experts said these kinds of comments hinted at a resistance among some Vatican officials to indulge what they, like many Europeans, perceive as American narcissism.

Vatican experts have often remarked that the cross would have been huge if all the pieces of wood claimed to be relics were authentic.