Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s body is lying in state in St Peter’s Basilica as thousands of people file by to pay tribute to the pontiff who shocked the world by retiring a decade ago.

As daylight broke, 10 white-gloved Papal Gentlemen — lay assistants to pontiffs and papal households — carried the body on a cloth-covered wooden stretcher up the centre aisle of the basilica to its resting place in front of the main altar under Bernini’s towering bronze canopy.

A Swiss Guard saluted as the body was brought in through a side door after Benedict’s remains had been transferred from the chapel of the monastery grounds where the frail 95-year-old former pontiff died on Saturday morning.

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