Being in Rome for the funeral of Pope Francis was a “real honour and privilege”, a group of friends from the UK and Ireland who travelled to the city to pay homage to him have said.

Lowrie, who appeared in the first episode of the soap in 1960 as the original bad body Dennis Tanner, died on Friday.

A quiet reverence was broken by a ripple of applause as mourners showed their appreciation for a man dubbed “the people’s pope”. Just shy of a week after he made a surprise appearance to delighted ...