Pope felt 'deep anguish' over Iraq war

While the pope and Bush, who is set to arrive in Rome late Wednesday ahead of the funeral, may have shared common ground on the issues of abortion and euthanasia, they were worlds apart over the use of military force to topple Saddam.

The Italian people were clearly on the side of the pope, as three million of them took to the streets of Rome in 2003 in the largest of worldwide protests against the war.

"There was a clear disagreement," the former US envoy to the Vatican, Jim Nicholson, recalled Monday. The pope "was a man of peace, and he always hoped for the peace option," he told the Denver Post.

"If he could keep war from breaking out, there's always a chance that peace would break out," he said. "That was his position about Iraq. ... He also said that war is a defeat for humanity."

Speaking to reporters in Washington on Monday, Bush sought to play down the rift. "Of course he was a man of peace and he didn't like war," Bush said. "And I fully understood that, and I appreciated the conversations I had with the Holy Father on the subject."

John Paul II used his moral position as leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics to lead a diplomatic offensive aimed at averting the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, which he said would be seen by extremists as a clash of civilizations.

"War must never be allowed to divide the religions of the world," he said then.

The pope met a range of world leaders in his efforts to prevent a war, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair and then Iraqi deputy prime Minister Tareq Aziz.