Vatican’s mile of mourners

ROME was a one-way city yesterday as all roads and bridges poured pilgrims into St Peter’s Square.

Buses ran 24 hours, visitors drove through the night and dwellers set off at dawn to join the biggest mass mourning the Vatican has ever seen. Groups held aloft the flags of their parishes as they streamed to the start of the Via della Conciliazione, the street that gives the first glimpse of the Basilica where Pope John Paul II lies in state.

People clutched flowers and banners, some mirroring Archbishop Sean Brady’s call for the Pope to be canonised by declaring him their ‘Santo Papa’.