Photo: Vatican Media
The crowds are quieter this time. By comparison with the enormous throng of people – most of them Poles – who came to see Pope John Paul II lying in St Peter’s Basilica, the thousands queuing to pay their respects to Pope Benedict are fewer but even more diverse.
I met a family from Brisbane who brought their girls Isla and Alysa, 6 and 14, to see a moment of history: “it’s very special.” Two slightly disgruntled Finns had come to see the basilica and hadn’t intended to see a former pope lying-in-state. A couple of Indians from Kerala working in Rome were there; so was a group of Brazilian nuns from the order of the Incarnate Word, an Indonesian sister who felt Pope Benedict had set the Church on the right course and a young American (Catholic “until Eighth Grade”) whose school trip had found itself in Rome quite serendipitously.
