Paula Orr stared at the yellowing, dead face of Pope Francis. Then she burst into tears: it was all too much.

“He looked so happy,” said Ms Orr, 67, a retired civil servant from Bedford who had been among the first members of the public queuing to say goodbye to a favourite pope on Wednesday.

“It was lovely. It was very moving, very emotional. You could see the serenity in his face. He is at peace.”

Ms Orr flew into Rome on Monday with her two sisters, learning of Pope Francis’s death as the plane touched down.

Devout Catholics, they had come to say prayers for a brother who died in October. Now they found themselves praying for a dead pope as well.

The sisters survived the Roman sunshine, joining the queue that grew steadily through the morning, before entering St Peter’s Basilica, where Pope Francis’s body lay under the 450ft dome.

The body, looking tiny in the vast space, was no more than ten feet away in an open casket, a simple coffin lined with red silk.

The throng shuffled by, pulling out mobile phones to take photographs, while the guards muttered in broken English, “no stop, please”, in an attempt to keep the queue moving.

One nun took a selfie with the coffin in the background, holding up proceedings for a second or two more.

Despite this being Italy, the queueing was not chaotic. Only a few queue-jumpers vaulted barriers to get ahead and it looked as though some ladies on the Pilgrims of Hope tour from the US Virgin Islands had barged through to gain an advantage.

Volunteer guides had no idea where the queue began but, by hook or Pope’s crook, it worked itself out. The sisters from Bedford shuffled and swayed for no more than an hour before finding themselves inside St Peter’s.

The hot sun gave way to cool air and the chatter dropped to an eerie silence.

“As I get closer, I am getting more nervous,” said Liz Duggan, 71, a retired teacher and Ms Orr’s big sister. “Our brother died last October and it’s one of the reasons we are here now.”

The Pope’s body did not upset Ms Duggan: for the sisters it was a sight of calm and peace. “The body is just a shell,” said Ms Duggan, who also lives in Bedford.

Mechelle Claxton, 59, the youngest of the three, was in awe. “He looked so awful on Sunday,” she said, in reference to Pope Francis’s final public audience with JD Vance, the American vice-president and Catholic convert, who was not exactly popular with the mourners in St Peter’s Square.

Now the Pope appeared at peace and serene, Ms Claxton said. Like her sisters she has been a frequent visitor to the basilica but, she explained: “This is the first time that it has felt like a proper holy place. Normally it feels like a bit of a cattle market.”

As they wandered out of the church and back into the sun, the sisters cried and hugged. They had arrived in St Peter’s Square just after 9am and had imagined they would be waiting all day, recalling the overnight queues that stretched for miles to see the coffin of the late Queen Elizabeth II 2022.

The Pope’s body will lie in state for the next three days.

On Wednesday, St Peter’s remained remarkably calm, with a scattering of nuns and priests among the mourners.

Sister Patricia McClain, 64, who moved to Rome from her native Ohio five years ago, wanted to say her own thank-you to Pope Francis.

“I just loved our Pope,” she said, “He has done so much to bring us together. His was very much an unconditional love. He truly ‘smelled like his sheep’.”

As Sister Patricia got closer to the body, you could sense an anticipation, an eagerness to be closer to her much-loved Pope. “He is a saint and I know he is in heaven. To be in the presence of a saint will bring the best out of me.”

Thinking of Saturday’s funeral – which world leaders including her own president would attend – she said she believed the Pope’s humility would somehow help Donald Trump and others chart a more humble and Christian course.

“That will be my prayer before the casket today for our Holy Father to intercede with miracles,” she said.

Earlier on a precisely choreographed day, a crowd of about 10,000 people had gathered in St Peter’s square by 9am to see the body taken in a procession from his residence in the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta to St Peter’s Basilica.

The service was beamed onto the big screens. Music and prayer filled the square as it began.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the senior figure in charge of the papal transition, led the Latin prayer, his reassuring Irish accent broadcast through speakers.

He began: “Dear brothers and sisters, with deep sorrow, we now accompany the mortal remains of our Pope Francis to the Vatican basilica, where he often exercised his ministry as Bishop of the Church which is in Rome and as Pastor of the universal Church.”

As Cardinal Farrell spoke, the square went silent. Nuns peered from windows within the higher tiers of the basilica.

St Peter’s bells began to toll and the procession of hundreds of colourfully-dressed cardinals, archbishops and others filed from the Pope’s first resting place to his next.

As the coffin approached the basilica, accompanied by eight Swiss Guards, the crowd applauded decorously. The casket was open to the sky: the last time the sun would shine on the late Pope’s face.

Louder, more confident applause was heard as the Holy Father’s body was carried up the steps and towards the entrance – before it was taken into the cool of the basilica.

Father Colin Crossey, 55, parish priest in the Down and Connor diocese that includes Belfast, who had queued since early morning for his seat, said he was “deeply moved”.

Fr Crossey explained: “He was outstanding. He had both humility and leadership. His papacy was about humility and service and love and that is what the world needs now.”

Liz Farley, 78, a parishioner who had travelled with Fr Crossey, went further. “He was about the last good person left in the world,” she said.

Fr Crossey had been in Rome when Pope Francis was elected and now he was back at his death. For him this was a celebration; seeing the open casket pass, an emotional moment.

“He truly was the figure of Christ,” said the priest, before trying to work out how to join the queue to get into St Peter’s.

Fr Crossey, Ms Farley, her daughter Shelly-Ann, 44, and her one-year-old daughter Esabella, had been in Rome for a spiritual break.

They considered staying until Saturday but decided to avoid the huge crowds – expected to top 200,000 – and return to Northern Ireland.

By then, the world’s leaders will have descended on Rome to say their farewells. The security will be alarmingly tight.

Wednesday was a good day for Pope Francis’s devoted followers to say their own low-key goodbye.

Additional reporting by Fiona Parker, in Vatican City