”How do we get to the end of that queue over there?” asked Patrizia Laudenzi, shielding her eyes with one hand as she peered down the Tiber.
”You’re at the end of the queue, Signora,” the police officer replied.
Laudenzi gave him one of those you’re-winding-me-up-aren’t-you kind of smiles. Until she realised he wasn’t.
The human stream of hundreds of thousands of pilgrims waiting to glimpse the body of John Paul II flowed for more than 3km, down one side of the Tiber from Ponte Umberto I, past Castel Sant’Angelo and over Ponte Vittorio Emanuele I. It then swept through the side streets to St Peter’s Square. And that was just one of two lines.
”Oh well,” said Laudenzi. ”Even if we have to wait 10, 12 hours, it’ll still be worth it.”
”Ten, 12 hours? They’ll be lucky,” said Antonio Lombardo, who had pulled up nearby on his scooter. ”Listen, I queued over the other side and it was a lot shorter than this. I joined the queue at 8.30pm last night and I got in to see the pope at 7am this morning.”
Italian civil protection officials reckoned that anyone joining the queue late on Wednesday could expect to wait 24 hours. To clear the area in time for the funeral on Friday, no one was allowed to join the lines after 10pm on Wednesday night.
About 500 people needed help during the night between Tuesday and Wednesday, and more were expected to drop out on Wednesday night because of exhaustion.
Nearby, volunteers from Azione Cattolica pulled up in a white van. Young men in overalls sprang out and began unloading bottled water and copies of a magazine with John Paul II on the cover. Within minutes, the magazines were being read by the pilgrims.
The lying in state of John Paul II has become an event comparable only perhaps with that of Mao Zedong. Or maybe the funeral of Princess Diana.
Carola Maenza from Grosseto admitted she did not even go to Mass any more.
”It was only after he died I realised just how much it had affected me,” she said.
”He touched me more than I ever imagined.”
Waiting patiently at a tape strung across the road to prevent the pilgrims blocking traffic over the Ponte Sant’Angelo, Olivia Cyranowicz was eating a huge ice cream.
She and her friend Basia Gaca had travelled in a school party from Torun in central Poland led by their religious instruction teacher.
”We thought it’d be interesting to go to a country we’d never visited before,” she said.
Basia added: ”And we wanted to say goodbye to the pope.”
”Yes, we can’t imagine another pope,” Olivia said. ”Because of him, everybody knows about Poland now. He made our country famous.”
At the other end of the bridge, Antonio Simonetti marvelled at the crowds.
”When John XXIII died, I was running a bar on the outskirts of Rome. I shut up at two in the morning and came down here and we went in pretty much straight away. There were about 50 or 60 people in the queue,” he recalled.
”Yes, but this pope knew the entire world,” said his brother, Antonio. ”It’s not like with the popes of the past.”
Peter Charman from Coventry had twice shaken hands with John Paul. When the pontiff died, he and some friends hopped on a flight.
Patricia Koning said: ”I think the thing about this pope was that he brought the papacy to the people. Before, if you weren’t a dignitary or a VIP, you never got to see the pope.”
Was she surprised that the Prince of Wales had postponed his wedding?
No, she said. ”The world has come here and he couldn’t be seen not to be here.” — Guardian Unlimited Â