Dozens of stamp collectors, tourists, priests, nuns and ordinary Romans queued outside a Vatican post office in St Peter's Square Tuesday as rare stamps marking the papal vacancy went on sale.
"They are not particularly valuable, maybe a little more (than ordinary stamps)," said Roman stamp collector Romano Paternosto.
"But I'm here because I just love stamps. It's a passion," said Paternosto, who has been collecting stamps since 1952 and already has stamps from "four or five" vacant sees.
Sister Maria from Mexico said her fellow nuns had asked her to buy some stamps as she was going to be at the Vatican. "It's always a souvenir," she said.
Sarah Yeomans from Los Angeles, California, said buying the stamps was a "good opportunity to have a physical representation of my being here at this time."
The tiny city-state's philately and minting office has issued a set of three stamps bearing the Latin words "Sede Vacante 2005," indicating the Holy See is vacant.
The stamps will be on sale only at Vatican post offices and will be valid only for the duration of the interregnum. Cardinals will meet in a conclave from next Monday to elect a successor to Pope John Paul II, who died April