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The solemn processions, with the flower-adorned biers followed by the clergy and the faithful, are often spectacular, especially in places where bier processions from each parish converge into a central square.

In Rafah, in the south, men strode behind a body being carried on a bier, Palestinian and Hamas flags raised behind.

She was cremated, and her ashes were taken on a “flower-decked bier” to Red Square during a funeral tribute, according to Associated Press accounts at the time.

“I owe him a lot and this for me was really a gift to be able to pray for an hour on his bier.”

As of Tuesday night, about 135,000 people had filed past the former pope, who has been lying in state without any papal regalia on a catafalque, a raised bier, before the basilica's main altar.