The funeral of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI will take place on Thursday after hundreds of thousands queued to see his body in the Vatican.
Church officials overnight made preparations to place Benedict in a wooden coffin before his funeral in St Peter’s Square.
Benedict, 95, died on December 31 in the monastery on Vatican grounds where he had spent his retirement, mainly devoting himself to prayer and reflection. He was the church's 265th pontiff.
The faithful in St Peter’s Square are expected to number at least 60,000 and have been invited to recite the rosary aloud.
By the time the basilica’s doors were shut to the public on Wednesday evening, about 200,000 people had paid their respects over three days of viewing.
Among the last were a couple from Calabria. Gaspare Guadagnuolo, 73, and Lina Proto, 62, said they remember a visit by Benedict to their home region.
“I was struck by people’s participation,” Ms Proto said. “There was a lot of intense emotion.”
Pope Francis is due to preside over Benedict’s funeral, an event drawing heads of state and royalty despite Benedict’s requests for simplicity and Vatican efforts to keep the first funeral for an emeritus pope in modern times low-key.
Only Italy and Germany were invited to send official delegations, and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Italian President Sergio Mattarella confirmed their participation.
Other heads of state and government are attending in a “private capacity”, including at least four prime ministers and two delegations of royal representatives.
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Joseph Ratzinger as a schoolboy in Aschau am Inn in 1932. AFP -
Joseph Ratzinger, 10, with classmates in Aschau am Inn, Bavaria, where he went to school from 1932 to 1937. AFP -
Joseph Ratzinger as a German Air Force assistant in 1943. AFP -
Ratzinger, right, and his brother Georg, left, after their ordination in 1951 with his sister Maria, his mother Maria and his father Josef. AFP -
Ratzinger during an open-air mass in 1952. AFP -
Joseph Ratzinger, a professor of theology, with Cologne's Cardinal Joseph Frings, who took him to the council at the Vatican as an adviser in the early 1960s. AFP -
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1977 in Vatican City. AFP -
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger with Mother Teresa at the 85th German Catholics Days in Freiburg in September 1978. AFP -
Archbishop of Munich and Freising Josef Ratzinger, right, bids farewell to Munich to become Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican. AFP -
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1994 signing an autograph during the 1,240th anniversary of the city of Fulda, Germany. AFP -
Cardinal Ratzinger, centre, his brother Georg, the Kapellmeister of the Cathedral of Regensburg, and their sister Maria Ratzinger in Munich. AFP -
Cardinal Ratzinger, centre, arrives to lead the funeral mass for Pope John Paul II in St Peter's Square at the Vatican City in 2005. AFP -
Joseph Ratzinger, the new Pope Benedict XVI, after being elected the 265th pope of the Roman Catholic Church, April 19, 2005. AFP -
Pope Benedict XVI on the balcony of St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican after being elected by the conclave of cardinals. AFP -
Pope Benedict XVI at the traditional weekly general audience in St Peter's square at the Vatican, December 7, 2005. AFP -
Pope Benedict XVI blesses the faithful in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican, December 25, 2007. Reuters -
Pope Benedict greets Abdul Aziz al-Ghurair, speaker of the Federal National Council of the United Arab Emirates, at the Vatican, October 22, 2008. Reuters -
Pope Benedict is welcomed by Jordan's King Abdullah and his wife Queen Rania at Amman airport, May 8, 2009. Reuters -
Pope Benedict in front of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem's Old City, May 12, 2009. Reuters -
Pope Benedict and Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah during a private meeting at the Vatican, May 6, 2010. Reuters -
Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip with the Pope at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, September 16, 2010. Reuters -
Pope Benedict arrives in Havana, Cuba, March 27, 2012. AFP -
Pope Benedict XVI arrives for a meeting with youths at Bkerke in Harissa, near Beirut, September 15, 2012. Reuters -
A mass held by Pope Benedict in Beirut, September 16, 2012. Reuters -
On February 11, 2013, Pope Benedict announced that he would resign on February 28, the first pope in centuries to do so. AFP -
The former pope arrives for the canonisation ceremony of popes John XXIII and John Paul II at the Vatican, April 27, 2014. Reuters -
Emeritus Pope Benedict, left, as Pope Francis arrives to lead a mass to create 20 new cardinals, February 14, 2015. Reuters -
Pope Francis, left, with Benedict at the Vatican, June 28, 2017. AFP -
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI at Munich Airport before his departure to Rome, June 22, 2020. Reuters
During his weekly address, Pope Francis drew applause when he mentioned those who were there paying tribute to Benedict, whom he called a “great master of catechesis”.
“His acute and gentle thought was not self-referential, but ecclesial, because he always wanted to accompany us in the encounter with Jesus,” he said.
After the funeral in the piazza, where Benedict will lie in a cypress coffin, he will be taken into the basilica, where his coffin will be placed inside a zinc one, and then finally into another made from oak.
In keeping with Benedict’s wishes, his remains will be placed in the crypt in the grottos underneath the basilica.
Benedict, who was elected pope in 2005, became the first pontiff in six centuries years to resign, announcing in 2013 that he no longer had the strength to lead the Catholic Church.
