Pope’s simple open casket lies on main altar of St Peter’s Basilica as mourners say: ‘It’s a privilege to be here’
Thousands of people queued for hours under the hot spring sun in St Peter’s Square on Wednesday to pay their final respects to Pope Francis, whose simple wooden coffin has been placed on the main altar of the 16th-century basilica, where he will lie in state until Friday evening.
The pope, the head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, died at his home in Casa Santa Marta on Monday aged 88 after a stroke and subsequent heart failure. He had been recovering from double pneumonia, which had kept him in hospital for five weeks.
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