As Benedict XVI lies in state, more than 135,000 Catholics visit the Vatican.

Prior to the ex-funeral pope’s on Thursday, there are growing lines, and more people are anticipated.

Before the former pope Benedict XVI’s funeral on Thursday, which will be attended by Pope Francis, an unprecedented ceremony in the Catholic church’s modern history, more than 135,000 people have already flocked to the Vatican.

Benedict passed away on Saturday at the age of 95, nearly ten years after he resigned as the first pope in 600 years.

The number of Catholics paying their respects in St. Peter’s Basilica, where his body is reposing for three days prior to the funeral, has exceeded Rome officials’ expectations.

Francis praised his predecessor, a conservative thinker, as “a great master of catechesis” during his weekly audience on Wednesday.

It’s the papal equivalent of Succession: the planning will start at Benedict XVI’s funeral.

He will be buried in the same tomb where Pope John Paul II was laid to rest prior to his beatification and receive a funeral service akin to that of a pope in office.

The palliums Benedict wore as part of his robes, coins and medals struck during his pontificate, and a metal cylinder containing a rogito—a text outlining his papacy—will all be interred with him.

Only two nations, Italy and Benedict’s native Germany, will have representatives at the funeral.

Benedict came forward on a number of issues despite remaining quiet for the previous ten years, frequently opposing Francis’s more liberal viewpoints.

In one of his most controversial essays, published in 2019, Benedict blamed the church’s sexual abuse scandals on the sexual revolution of the 1960s and “homosexual cliques” among priests. His opinion came two months after an unprecedented Vatican summit on tackling clerical sexual abuse, and sharply contrasted with that of Pope Francis, who blamed the scandals on a clerical culture that elevated priests above the laity.

The results of a German investigation published last January said Benedict had failed to act against four priests accused of child sexual abuse during his time as archbishop of Munich.

In Rome, a further 70,000 Catholics are expected on Thursday.

Iacopo Scaramuzzi, a Vatican journalist for La Repubblica newspaper, said: “Seventy thousand is large but is not comparable to the numbers who came for John Paul II – for him it was 600,000 a day. Benedict was not a very popular man, in fact he was deliberately unpopular … a conservative intellect who went against the current and who disliked crowds. Some want him to become a saint straight away, but he was nothing like John Paul II.”