Long lines since the early hours of the morning in the Vatican for the last farewell to Benedict XVI .
Mattarella and Meloni were among the first to go to St. Peter's yesterday , where the body of the Pope emeritus will be on display until Thursday's funeral presided over by Francis.
Ratzinger will be buried in the Vatican grottoes , in the tomb where Wojtyla was previously.
Yesterday the tribute from the Undersecretary to the Presidency of the Council Alfredo Mantovano and the Minister of Agriculture Francesco Lollobrigida also arrived. Then that of the owner of the Farnesina Antonio Tajani but also other political representatives announced their presence. There is not the enormous crowd that there was for the death of Wojtyla, when the waiting times to enter the basilica were on average 24 hours, and with over three million pilgrims who at the end of the exhibition had greeted the Polish Pope. But the flow of people who want to "greet" Benedict still exceeds all expectations .
There are 65 thousand faithful who went to the basilica yesterday , double the 30-35 thousand that had been forecast in recent days by the Prefecture of Rome.
It is a composed and orderly crowd that passes in front of Ratzinger's body after a couple of hours of waiting. Everyone goes through the metal detector, then queues from the square to enter. Once you set foot in the basilica, everything is wrapped in silence. It flows quickly, the time for a quick prayer, or a photo. The first pilgrims were welcomed by Msgr. Georg Gaenswein, Ratzinger's secretary, and the cardinal archpriest of the basilica Mauro Gambetti. The older ones at the end of the homage have teary eyes. But even young people face this row with conviction for a Pontiff emeritus who has often been perceived as distant from the people.
Among the pilgrims were also the tourists who were already in Rome during this end-of-year holiday season. And if the guides invite you to omit entering the basilica "because it really takes too much time", someone doesn't give up and gets in line just the same even to experience a moment that is in some ways historic, because Benedict is in any case the first Pope emeritus of the history .
THE FUNERALS - A solemn but "sober" farewell to the pope emeritus , as Ratzinger himself would have liked . of Belgium Philip , the queen mother of Spain Sofia , accompanied by the minister for the presidency Felix Bolaños, and by a group of senior prelates led by the president of the Spanish Bishops' Conference, Cardinal Juan José Omella , and then also by the president of Portugal Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and a delegation from the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople .
The Dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, or the Secretary of State of the Holy See, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, could be at the side of the Pontiff during the celebrations.
(Unioneonline/vl)