GB News host Andrew Pierce has expressed his fury at "disrespectful" mourners visiting St Peter's Basilica after being caught taking selfies with the late Pope Francis.Following his death, the Pope is lying in state for three days at the St Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, where mourners have been lining the streets to queue to pay their respects.FULL STORY HERE.
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00:00Now, moving on, I am completely shocked that mourners have been filing into the Basilica to pay their respects to the Pope and have been taking selfies.
00:10Is nothing sacred?
00:12No, it seems not. Well, of course, the funeral is on Saturday.
00:16Ellie Costello is there for us in Vatican City.
00:20Good morning, Ellie. Lovely to see you there.
00:22We've got the live pictures of hundreds of thousands of tourists, of course, descending there to see the Pope lying in state.
00:30But explain to our viewers and our listeners what has been happening only in 2025 would you see this?
00:40Yes, good morning to you, Andrew and Bev.
00:43And yes, 50,000 people have come through the doors of St. Peter's Basilica in the past 24 hours to see Pope Francis lying in state.
00:52Some of them waiting up to eight hours to do so.
00:56But unfortunately, not everybody has treated it with the respect and reverence that lying in state so deserves.
01:04We have seen people taking selfies with the corpse of the late Pope and also streaming live on TikTok the entire experience.
01:16There have been selfie sticks near the open casket of Pope Francis as well.
01:21Now, there is no rule that has banned photography.
01:25So we've even seen priests and nuns taking photos of the open coffin of Pope Francis.
01:32You'd imagine that would be for their own personal memory.
01:35But still, it is quite shocking to see.
01:38It's in stark contrast to what we saw with the late Queen lying in state where absolute decorum and dignity was held around her coffin where everybody just filed past silently, bowed their heads for a few seconds and then moved along.
01:54These scenes are completely opposite to that, almost a bit of a scramble to get as close to the coffin as they possibly can.
02:03And I've been speaking to people here in Rome.
02:06They're not happy to come on camera.
02:07But one lady told me that the moment had been ruined for her after she queued for eight hours.
02:13She's a devout Catholic.
02:15She wouldn't even think to get her phone out near a dead body.
02:19She says, you can call me old fashioned.
02:21But at times like this, I'm glad to be old fashioned because I'm aghast at the way that society has turned.
02:30And it is really, isn't it, Andrew and Bev, a sad reflection of our selfie obsessed, social media obsessed culture where everything is documented.
02:41People take photos and videos of everything, forgetting that this is, in fact, a human being.
02:47And perhaps they would not think to do the same thing if that was their relative lying there in an open coffin.