PNS|Vatican city
World leaders and Catholic faithful bade farewell to Pope Francis in a funeral Saturday that highlighted his concern for people on the “most peripheral of the peripheries” and reflected his wishes as pastor.
Though presidents and princes attended the Mass in St Peter’s Square, prisoners and migrants will welcome him at the basilica across town where he will be buried.
Some 2,50,000 people flocked to the funeral Mass and tens of thousands more lined the motorcade route, clapping and cheering “Papa Francesco” as his simple wooden coffin travelled aboard one of his old popemobiles to its final resting place at St Mary Major Basilica on the other side of the city.
It was then carried into the church, escorted by Swiss Guards.
Earlier, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the 91-year-old dean of the College of Cardinals, eulogised Francis as a pope of the people, a pastor who knew how to communicate to the “least among us” with an informal, spontaneous style.
“He was a pope among the people, with an open heart towards everyone,” Re said in a spirited and highly personal sermon. He drew applause from the crowd when he recounted Francis’ constant concern for migrants, including when he celebrated Mass at the US-Mexico border and travelled to a refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece, and brought 12 migrants home with him.
“The guiding thread of his mission was also the conviction that the church is a home for all, a home with its doors always open,” Re said.
Re said with his travels, including his last major trip to Asia last year, Francis reached “the most peripheral of the peripheries of the world.”
The Argentine pontiff choreographed the funeral himself when he revised and simplified the Vatican’s rites and rituals last year. His aim was to emphasise the pope’s role as a mere pastor and not “a powerful man of this world.”
It was a reflection of Francis’ 12-year project to radically reform the papacy, to stress priests as servants and to construct “a poor church for the poor.” He articulated the mission just days after his 2013 election and it explained the name he chose as pope, honouring St Francis of Assisi “who had the heart of the poor of the world,” according to the official decree of the pope’s life that was placed in his coffin before it was sealed Friday night.
Despite Francis’ focus on the powerless, the powerful were out in force at his funeral. US President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer joined Prince William and European royals leading more than 160 official delegations.
Argentine President Javier Milei had the pride of place given Francis’ nationality, even if the two didn’t particularly get along and the pope alienated many Argentines by never returning home.
Trump and Zelenskyy met privately on the sidelines of the funeral. A photo showed the two men sitting alone, facing one another and hunched over on chairs in St Peter’s Basilica, where Francis often preached the need for a peaceful end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The white facade of St Peter’s glowed pink as the sun rose Saturday and hordes of mourners rushed into the square. Giant television screens were set up along the surrounding streets for those who couldn’t get close.
The Mass and funeral procession across town — with Francis’ coffin carried on the open-topped popemobile he used during his 2015 trip to the Philippines — were also broadcast live around the world.
Police helicopters whirled overhead, part of the massive security operation Italian authorities mounted, including more than 2,500 police, 1,500 soldiers and a torpedo ship off the coast, Italian media reported.
Many mourners had planned to be in Rome anyway this weekend for the now-postponed Holy Year canonisation of the first millennial saint, Carlo Acutis, and groups of scouts and youth church groups nearly outnumbered the gaggles of nuns and seminarians.
“He was a very charismatic pope, very human, very kind, above all very human,” said Miguel Vaca, a pilgrim from Peru who said he had camped out near the piazza. “It is a very great emotion to say goodbye to him.”
The poor and marginalised welcome him
Francis, the first Latin American and first Jesuit pope, died Easter Monday at age 88 after suffering a stroke while recovering at home from pneumonia.
Following his funeral, preparations can begin in earnest to launch the centuries-old process of electing a new pope, a conclave that will likely begin in the first week of May.
In the interim, the Vatican is being run by a handful of cardinals, key among them Re, who is organising the secret voting in the Sistine Chapel.
