'We'll wait. The clock has stopped'

Maria Church is a mother of five from Kensington who attends Mass in leafy Holland Park: Terence Thompson is a Manchester-born Irishman who runs a Bromley paving business and has a colourful line in anecdotes.

But they have one important thing in common: their faith. And it is this that led them to queue for hours to file past the body of Pope John Paul II.

Mr Thompson was outside the Vatican with wife Dolly, two family members, and a T shirt saying: "Manchester says goodbye John Paul." At 2pm they had been waiting 10 hours, with at least three to go.

He said the Pope had been dead 15 minutes when he got a call from friend Paddy: "He said, 'The poor old Pope's died. He visited all them countries, it's right we go and see him.'"

Mrs Church, who had come with youngest son Johnny, 11, said: "At first I thought it was crazy. But it kept bugging me. I thought, 'Why am I not going?' And so I did." She has already met the Pope at a general audience in Rome: he hugged her daughter Francesca, who is now 18, on her gap year, and helping the Sisters of Mother Theresa in Ethiopia. Mrs Church, who attends St Francis of Assisi church, added: "He was a great Pope. He stood for the young and the poor, and he was a great peacemaker."

Mr Thompson, 48, recalled the Pope's 1982 visit to Manchester: "I could almost have touched him in his Popemobile. A wonderful feeling comes over you from being close to him."

To get to Rome, Mr Thompson first had to drive from Bromley to Warrington to pick up two friends. "Until 1am we had a few Guinnesses, and got up at

5.30am to go to Manchester airport. We had a couple there, changed at Amsterdam, had a couple there, and got lost in the terminal. Since Monday I've had about seven hours' sleep.

"It does not matter. The clock has stopped. We get there when we get there."