After John Paul II's death, public viewing continued day and night inside St Peter's Basilica. Figures reported in April 2005 put the flow through the entrance at about 21,000 people an hour, even as the line outside reached roughly five kilometres at its longest.
The distinctive point is not only how many people reached Rome, but how the basilica entrance became a system for moving an immense queue at a steady rate. The quiet of a religious rite had to coexist with uninterrupted mass admission.