AP reports from Vatican City that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI‘s body, his head resting on a pair of crimson pillows, lay in state in St. Peter’s Basilica on Monday as tens of thousands queued to pay tribute to the pontiff who shocked the world by retiring a decade ago.
On the eve of the first of three days of viewing, Italian security officials had announced at least 25,000-30,000 people would come on Monday. But by the end of the first day’s viewing, some 65,000 persons had passed by the bier, the Vatican said.
As daylight broke, 10 white-gloved Papal Gentlemen — lay assistants to pontiffs and papal households — carried the body on a cloth-covered wooden stretcher following its arrival at the basilica to its resting place in front of the main altar under Bernini’s towering bronze canopy.
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