MANILA - Close to 40,000 people have gathered outside the Manila Memorial Park in Parañaque Wednesday to catch a glimpse and pay their final respects to former president Corazon Aquino.

ABS-CBN footage showed the funeral cortege reaching the Sucat Exit before 6:30 p.m., more than seven hours after it left the Manila Cathedral in Intramuros. Police said close to 300,000 people have turned out in the streets of Manila for the funeral cortege.

Chief Superintendent Jaime Calungsod, Southern Police District chief, said thousands of mourners have packed the streets from the Sucat Exit all the way to the memorial park.

"We're having a hard time controlling the crowd because there's a lot of them. We put barriers to stop the people but the crowd has overflowed and gone over the barriers," he told ANC.

He said the funeral cortege has been slow-going because of the number of people going to the streets to pay tribute to the former president.

Mrs. Aquino, 76, died last August 1 after more than a year-long battle with colon cancer. The former president is credited with restoring democracy after the1986 EDSA Revolution that removed President Ferdinand Marcos from power and catapulted her to the presidency.

In his homily at the Manila Cathedral, Fr. Catalino Arevalo said Aquino made him proud again to be a Filipino after her presidency ended 20 years of Marcos rule.

"Now you belong with the immortals, but these words are for the mortals with bruised hearts who have lost the mother of the people. Perhaps a little less elegantly, a seminarian told me last Monday, she was only the true queen our people had ever had. She was queen because we knew she truly held our hearts and in the gentleness and greatness of her own," he said.

Ballsy Aquino-Cruz, eldest daughter of the former president, said the funeral procession of her mom reminded her of the crowds that came for the funeral of their dad, Sen. Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr., in 1983.

"Same feeling, I guess, in 1983 when we were taking Dad to Manila Memorial Park. Although we didn't expect this. We're just so grateful for the love they are showing Mom and our family," Aquino-Cruz told ANC.

At least two million people lined the streets of Manila for the funeral procession of the late Sen. Aquino after his assassination on Aug. 21, 1983. The senator's death, which had been blamed on then strongman Ferdinand Marcos, is widely viewed as having precipitated the fall of martial rule and the restoration of Philippine democracy.