Late Pope John Paul II’s coffin was laid to rest on Monday in St Peter’s basilica near the famous Pietà statue by Michelangelo, a day after the ceremony that put him on the path to sainthood.

The coffin was sealed under the altar in a chapel at a private ceremony attended by a few senior clergy – in contrast to the grand Vatican mass on Sunday in which he was beatified in front of more than a million people.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi informed reporters of the burial.

Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims on Sunday and earlier on Monday filed past the simple wooden coffin, which was exhumed from a Vatican crypt on Friday and placed in the basilica for people to pay their respects to the former Pontiff.

John Paul II’s was a historic papacy that helped bring down Communism in his native Poland and reinvigorated the Church but he was also criticised for his conservative social views and for failing to act against paedophile priests.