A steady stream of tens of thousands of people filed into St. Peter's Basilica on Monday to pay their respects to former Pope Benedict XVI, whose body was laying in state without any papal paraphernalia ahead of his funeral this week.
It was not clear if the pastoral cross or any other items he used will be buried with him but the decision not to have them during the public viewing appeared to have been decided to underscore that he no longer was pope when he died.
Benedict's closest aide, Archbishop Georg Ganswein, sat in the first pew to the side of the body along with Benedict's household and medics who looked after him in his final days. "I had to come," Sri, a woman visiting from Jakarta, Indonesia, told Reuters. "He was the pope and I am a Catholic," she said, declining to give her surname.
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