Wednesday

Well, gentle readers, I'm wrecked! In addition to fighting a cold I've found that living through such a time as this is exhausting. As for news, I shall leave that to the media - the date of the conclave has been announced and the Pope's testament is to be published tomorrow. The Corriere della Sera rightly speculated that it would be in Polish and would not touch on the practical matters surrounding the burial. Civil and church authorities are expecting a huge wave of pilgrims in the last couple of days - on Friday no cars will be allowed enter the city and it'll become a 'no fly zone'. The media are still around in force - pretty much every English speaker I know here has been interviewed by the media at least once. I've not been over at the Vatican today and don't plan to head there until Thursday night/early Friday morning if my consitition permits. What is very noticeable is the stream of buses crossing the city bringing pilgrims from Termini train station to St Peter's. They seem to be passing (full to capacity) at the rate of a half-dozen a minute or so. The statistic of the day is that every hour 18,000 file past the Pope's remains and that I've heard accounts of people being in the queue for 9 and even 11 hours.