The Vatican says that some 250,000 mourners were presented through the Basilica of San Pedro that becomes a state of three days in the state.
Tens of thousands of people presented themselves to the Basilica of San Pedro to pay final respect for Pope Francis on his last day of lying in the state before his funeral.
The basilica was open most of Thursday night until Friday morning, closing its doens for only three hours during the night.
The long winding bars around the Plaza de San Pedro and the surrounding roads, before being channeled by the heart of the basilica in a single column that leads to the central altar, where Francis’s open coffin was exhibited on a stretch on Friday.
People advanced slowly, a few hours of waiting, to have a few minutes inside to respect Francis.
The 88 -year -old Pope’s body, who died Monday in his rooms in the guest house in Santa Marta del Vaticano after suffering a stroke, was taken to San Pedro in a solemn procession on Wednesday.
Since then, about 250,000 people from all over the world have said goodbye to the pontiff, said the Vatican.
“It is a very strong feeling (being here),” Reuters Patricio Castriota, a visitor who, like the Pope, is from Argentina, told Reuters. “This farewell was very sad, but I thank God that I could see it.
“He is the only Pope that we had to come from South America, a Pope who had many good intentions for the Catholic Church,” Castriot said. “He has cleaned (a lot) or the bad, maybe not everything, but he tried.”
Francis, who became Pope in 2013, was the first pontiff of the Western hemisphere and was known for lovely and even humorous behavior.
His 12 -year -old papacy was sometimes turbulent, with Francis seeking to review a divided institution but fighting with the traditionalists who opposed their many changes.
“He humanized the Church, without deacralization,” said Cardinal Francois-Xavier Bustillo, who runs the Church on the French island of Corsica.
Hundreds of missing people were rejected when the authorities closed the square hours of San Pedro before the visualization period ended. Public visions ended at 7pm (17:00 GMT) on Friday, before a formal rite to seal the coffin of the deceased potato.
When informing of the Vatican, Hoda Abdel-Hamid of Al Jazeera said that the cardinals should help with the closure of the coffin in a private ceremony.
“Within the coffin, twelve coins will put, each one represents a year of Pope Francis’s papacy. There will also be a tube of children or metal with a paper inside, describing his papacy and legacy,” he said.
The Vatican said that at least 130 foreign delegations had confirmed their assistance to the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday, including about 50 heads of state and 10 reigning monarchs.
Among foreign leaders, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, addresses Rome for the funeral, an unexpected first foreign trip of his second term in which he will face leaders such as Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, a leader who has managed to forge a link with Trump, and the outgoing German chancellor Olaf Scholz, both at the funeral, as well as the main executives of the European Union, Ursula von Leyen and Antonio Costa.
The Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a leftist veteran whose defeated rival Jair Bolsonaro was a twin soul or ideological Trump or Trump.
