The body of emeritus pope Benedict XVI was brought to St. Peter’s Basilica on Monday as tens of thousands of faithful lined up to pay tribute to the pontiff who shocked the world by retiring a decade ago.
It was expected that between 25,000 and 30,000 people would come today, Monday, to pay tribute to him. But six hours after the basilica’s doors opened to the public, Vatican police estimated that some 40,000 people had passed through the compound, the Holy See said.
At dawn, 10 white-gloved Papal Knights, along with lay attendants from pontiffs and papal houses, carried the body on a cloth-covered wooden stretcher to its resting place in front of the basilica’s main altar, under the bronze canopy of Bernini.
His former secretary, Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, and the women who served in Benedict’s household followed a van with his remains on foot for a few hundred meters in a silent procession toward the basilica.
Shortly after 9 a.m. today the doors of the basilica opened so the public could pay their respects to the late pontiff, who retired from the papacy in 2013. He was the first pope to do so in six hundred years.
As Benedict wished, the funeral will be marked by simplicity, the Vatican said when announcing the death.
Benedict XVI left a spiritual testament in which he asks for “heartfelt forgiveness” from all those whom he has “could harm in his life”, in a text that the Vatican released hours after he died in the monastery. Mater Ecclesiaein the Vatican gardens, where he has lived since his resignation in 2013.
