A painting of Pope John Paul II, surrounded by white and pink flowers was set up in front of the altar at Newman Catholic Center Sunday night.

In the back of the room on a table, a memory book with messages of admiration for the pope sat alongside rosary beads, in honor of the 264th pontiff.

During mass yesterday evening, Father Michael Black said he was very emotional about the pope’s death and was only going to hold a prayer session, not a eulogy.

“He was the huge influence in my life,” Black said.

Black met Pope John Paul II twice, once in 1997 at a seminar and in 1999 in one of the pope’s personal rooms in the Vatican.

Black also attended the pope’s last public mass on January 1.

“Meeting the pope in the Vatican was awesome,” Black said. “It was like a force field, everyone feels it, it’s like magic.”

Black said the pope only talked to him for about one minute.

“He had just appointed a new archbishop to Chicago and he asked me if I was satisfied,” Black said. “I said yes.”

Even then, the pope was in a feeble condition, having been shot in 1981 in an assassination attempt and run over once by a Nazi truck when he was younger, Black said.

“A lot of his friends were killed,” Black said.

Father Kenneth Anderson of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in DeKalb watched the pope speak twice. Once at a World Youth Day event in Denver, Colo., and the other time in Des Moines, Iowa at a previously unplanned rally in 1979. World Youth Day, now in its 20th year, features the pope speaking to youth about various topics relating to religion and faith.

“He seemed real alive and animated around young people,” Anderson said. “When he looked at the crowd, it seemed like he made eye contact with every person.”

Even though Anderson never spoke with the pope, he characterized Pope John Paul II as being a person of compassion, and “coming across very genuinely.”

“Because of his demeanor, it’s not like meeting President George Bush or the Queen of England,” Anderson said. “He really had a compassion for the poor and oppressed.”

Anderson talked about a seminary in Rome where a small crowd of 200 people gathered around the pope and sang “Salve Regina.”

Previous popes had not been as accommodating or personable, he said.

When asked what the pope represented, one student said he was just a great man.

“There were no boundaries when it came to helping people, he helped people of all races,” said Christina Rowland, junior time arts major. “It was sad when he died.”

St. Mary’s Catholic Church, 302 Fisk Ave., will hold “A Mass For the Dead,” which will feature prayers and remembrance of the pope, at 12:10 p.m.

Finally at rest after years of crippling disease, Pope John Paul II’s body lay in state Sunday, his hands clutching a rosary, his pastoral staff under his arm. Millions prayed and wept at services across the globe, as the Vatican prepared for the ritual-filled funeral and conclave that will choose a successor.

Television images gave the public its first view of the pope since his death: lying in the Vatican’s frescoed Apostolic Palace, dressed in crimson vestments and a white bishop’s miter, his head resting on a stack of gold pillows. A Swiss Guard stood on either side as diplomats, politicians and clergy paid their respects at his feet.

An estimated 100,000 people turned out at St. Peter’s Square for a morning Mass and thousands more-tourists, Romans, young and old-kept coming throughout the day, filling the broad boulevard leading to St. Peter’s Basilica.

-The Associated Press contributed to this story.