Filipinos bid farewell to former president and democracy icon Corazon Aquino

About 600 priests and nuns linked arms around the Aquino mausoleum at the Manila Memorial Park to keep back the crowd who followed the flatbed truck with her flag-draped coffin on its final, nine-hour journey through the rain-soaked streets of the capital.

The procession went from the Manila Cathedral on a 14-mile (22-kilometer) route jammed with Filipinos dressed in yellow — the signature color of the 1986 prodemocracy uprising led by Aquino that toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Many in the crowds flashed the "L" sign for "laban," or fight, in Filipino — an anti-dictatorship slogan — and chanted "Cory."

Aquino was buried Wednesday evening inside a simple white-painted tomb next to her husband, Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr., the opposition leader whose mantle she reluctantly took on after his 1983 assassination when he returned from exile in the U.S. to run against Marcos.

Despite a patchy record during her six years in office as the 11th president of the Philippines, she remained a beloved figure. She died on Saturday after a yearlong battle with colon cancer. Her passing prompted an immense outpouring of grief.