Crowds of mourners waited in line on Sunday for a chance to visit Pope Francis’ final resting place in the Santa Maria Maggiore church in Rome, a day after his funeral service that was attended by world leaders and royalty.

Hundreds of people filed past the tomb of Pope Francis from early on Sunday morning in the Roman basilica where he chose to be buried in a break from tradition. No pope had been laid to rest outside the Vatican in more than a century,

Fiorello Maffei, a 58-year-old who lives in London, returned to Italy for the now postponed canonisation of Carlo, a Londoner himself born to Italian parents who died of leukaemia at the age of 15. Maffei said he had found Francis’s funeral “very touching” and full of simple words and messages of love that still “carried great weight”.