Employees of the Vatican, including Vatican radio staff, have been queuing for several hours to pay their last respects to the body of Pope John Paul II in the Clementine hall inside the Vatican. Large numbers of people with connections to the Vatican and to the diocese of Rome have been trying to say goodbye to their pope before his body is taken through the Vatican halls, across St Peters Square and into the basilica at 17.00 Monday afternoon.

Some of those who have been able to catch a last glimpse of the body of John Paul II feel that in death he has returned to the young pope they remembered, others that his face, deeply lined, is marked by the tiredness of suffering, and others that he is now quite unlike the person they once knew.