Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI body lying in state at Vatican

SOURCE: AP — 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 thousands of people filed by to pay tribute to the pontiff who shocked the world by retiring a decade ago.

As daylight broke, 10 white-gloved Papal Gentlemen — lay assistants to pontiffs and papal households — carried the body on a cloth-covered wooden stretcher after its arrival at the basilica to its resting place in front of the main altar under Bernini’s towering bronze canopy.

A Swiss Guard had saluted as the body was brought in via a side door after Benedict’s remains, placed in a van, were transferred from the chapel of the monastery grounds where the increasingly frail, 95-year-old former pontiff had passed away on Saturday morning.

His longtime secretary, Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, and a handful of consecrated laywomen who served in Benedict’s household, followed the van by foot for a few hundred meters in a silent procession toward the basilica. Some of the women stretched out a hand to touch the body with respect.

Before the rank-and-file faithful were allowed into the basilica, prayers were recited and the basilica’s archpriest, Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, sprinkled holy water over the body, and a small cloud of incense was released near the bier. Benedict’s hands were clasped, a rosary around his fingers.

Just after 9 a.m., the doors of the basilica were swung open so the public, some who had waited for hours in the dampness before dawn, could pay their respects to the late pontiff, who retired from the papacy in 2013 to become the first pope to do so in 600 years.

Faithful and curious, the public strode briskly up the centre aisle to pass by the bier with its cloth draping after waiting in a line that by midmorning snaked around St Peter’s Square.

Benedict’s body was dressed with a miter, the peaked headgear of a bishop and a red cloak.