By Joshua McElwee and Giulia Segreti
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of mourners filed into St. Peter’s Basilica on Friday on the last day to pay final respects to Pope Francis ahead of his funeral on Saturday.
Long queues snaked around St. Peter’s Square and the surrounding roads, before being funnelled through the heart of the basilica in a single column leading to the central altar, where Francis’ open-topped coffin was displayed on a dais.
The basilica was open for most of Thursday evening into Friday morning, shutting its doors for only three hours overnight.
The body of the 88-year-old pope, who died on Monday in his rooms at the Vatican’s Santa Marta guesthouse after suffering a stroke, was brought to St. Peter’s in a solemn procession on Wednesday.
Since then, about 150,000 people from all over the world have bid farewell to the pontiff, the Vatican said.
“It’s a very strong feeling (to be here),” said Patricio Castriota, a visitor who, like the pope, is from Argentina. “This farewell was very sad, but I thank God that I was able to see him”.
“He’s the only pope we’ve had who came from South America, a pope who had many good intentions for the Catholic Church,” said Castriota. “He cleaned up (a lot) of the bad, maybe not all of it, but he tried.”
Francis, who was pope since 2013, was the first pontiff from the Western hemisphere and was known for an unusually charming, and even humorous, demeanour.
His 12-year papacy was sometimes turbulent, with Francis seeking to overhaul a divided institution but battling with traditionalists who opposed his many changes.
“He humanised the church, without desacralising it,” said Cardinal Francois-Xavier Bustillo, who leads the Church on the French island of Corsica.
Queues on Friday morning were stretching halfway down the main boulevard leading through Rome into the Vatican.
People were pressing forward slowly, some waiting hours, in order to have a few minutes inside to pay their respects to Francis.
Vatican officials plan to end viewings at 7 p.m. on Friday, ahead of a formal rite to seal the late pope’s coffin. The Vatican said it would close access to the line to enter the basilica around 6 p.m.
“What surprised me was how determined he was to serve the Church and love his people with all his energy, to the very end,” Italian Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re – the ceremonial leader of the College of Cardinals and a retired Vatican official – told Italian daily La Repubblica in an interview published on Friday.
ROME PREPARES FOR FUNERAL
A conclave to choose a new pontiff is unlikely to start before May 6. In the meantime, the world’s Catholic cardinals have assumed temporary control of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church.
Cardinals present in Rome are convening almost daily, primarily to discuss logistical matters, in what is called a “general congregation”.
149 of the world’s 252 cardinals were present for the meeting on Friday morning, the Vatican said, with dozens more expected to arrive through the rest of the day.
Francis’ coffin will be sealed in a private ceremony on Friday evening led by eight Catholic cardinals, including a U.S. prelate who has faced criticism over his handling of sexual abuse cases.
Among those also present will be the late pope’s secretaries.
Rome is preparing for the arrival of hundreds of high-profile delegations attending Saturday’s funeral, including U.S. President Donald Trump, who will be flying into the Italian capital late on Friday.
Authorities have started ramping up security ahead of the ceremony, with snipers on rooftops, drones watching from the sky and an army device readied to neutralise hostile flying objects.
The heart of Rome is expected to be closed to traffic on Saturday to allow a funeral motorcade carrying the pope’s remains to make its way slowly to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore (St. Mary Major), where Francis, in a break from tradition, asked to be buried instead of St. Peter’s Basilica.
Crowds are expected to gather along the route, which will pass by many of Rome’s famed monuments, including the Colosseum.
The pope’s tomb will be in a niche in a side aisle of the basilica, with just the word “Franciscus”, his name in Latin, engraved on the marble.
(Reporting by Joshua McElwee and Giulia Segreti; Additional reporting by Leonardo Benassatto, Malgorzata Wojtunik, Hanna Rantala, Miguel Pereira and Lavinia Sdoga; Editing by Alex Richardson, Mark Heinrich, Peter Graff)
