Outside St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, American tourists joined the faithful to mourn Pope Francis' death.
Among them were a couple from Gallatin Gateway in Montana, Doug Rand and his wife, Ruth Angeletti.
Rand described the pope as someone who worked "right up to the last day, and his doctors told him to take a two-month rest, and he worked yesterday and died this morning." He added that the pontiff was "always working for the little guy and the poor and the disadvantaged and the abused."
His wife, at times struggling to speak through her tears, said Francis had inspired them both and they would miss him for "his concern for others," his commitment to the planet and the environment, and for the fact that he was forever "trying to stop wars."
Bianca Lott, from Northfield, Minn., had been studying abroad in Rome for her spring semester. Born and raised as a Catholic, she had previously visited Rome as a pilgrim.
Given that Francis died on Easter Monday, she said she felt a "a strange happiness at the timing," which she called "poetic."
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