Tens of thousands of mourners entered St. Peter’s Basilica in a constant stream on Monday to pay their respects to retired Pope Benedict XVI at the beginning of his three-day state burial.
Benedict passed away on Saturday at the age of 95, in the remote Vatican monastery where he had been living since his shocking retirement in 2013.
After witnessing the body, Veronica Siegal, a 16-year-old Catholic high school student from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who is in Rome for a religious study programme, told Reuters, “I feel like he was a grandfather to us.”
For one of her classes, she claimed to have read one of Benedict’s volumes on Jesus.
“I know that he is in a better place because he was a holy man and he led so well,” said her classmate, Molly Foley, also 16, from Atlanta, Georgia. A third girl in the group wore an American flag on her back.
The procession carrying Benedict’s body from the monastery to a site in front of the main altar of Christendom’s largest Church took place via the Vatican Gardens just before dawn. Benedict’s body was covered in scarlet and gold liturgical garments and put on a simple dais.
No papal regalia, such as a crosier, the silver staff with a crucifix, or a pallium, the band of cloth worn around the neck by archdiocesan bishops, were present on the body, which was flanked by two Swiss Guards who stood at attention.
In 2005, when the body of Pope John Paul II was on display, both were on it.
