Vatican readies for Pope Francis’s funeral as world leaders set to fly in to Rome
Vatican readies for Pope Francis’s funeral as world leaders head to Rome
(about 5 hours later)
Tens of thousands of mourners have queued for hours to pay their last respects to pontiff, whose coffin will be closed on Friday evening
Tens of thousands of mourners have queued for hours to pay respects to pontiff before coffin is sealed on Friday
The Vatican will make final preparations on Friday for Pope Francis’s funeral as the last of the huge crowds of mourners file through St Peter’s Basilica to view his open coffin.
Almost 130,000 people from all over the world have viewed Pope Francis’s body as the Vatican makes the final preparations for his funeral on Saturday, an event that will be attended by 50 heads of state and 10 monarchs.
Many of the 50 heads of state and 10 monarchs attending Saturday’s ceremony in St Peter’s Square, who include US president Donald Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, are expected to arrive in Rome on Friday.
St Peter’s Basilica closed at 2.30am on Friday and reopened three hours later to accommodate the last of the huge crowds of mourners who had waited patiently to pay their respects to Francis, who died at the age of 88 on Monday after a stroke. The coffin will be sealed at 8pm in a ceremony attended by senior cardinals.
Italian and Vatican authorities have placed the area around St Peter’s under tight security before the funeral, with drones blocked, snipers on roofs and fighter jets on standby.
Many of the funeral guests, including the US president, Donald Trump, and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will arrive in Rome on Friday.
Tens of thousands of people have already queued for hours to pay their last respects to Francis, whose coffin will be closed at 8pm local time in a ceremony attended by senior cardinals. Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the camerlengo who is running the Vatican’s day-to-day affairs until a new pope is elected, will preside over the so-called “Rite of the Sealing of the Coffin”.
At least 130 other foreign delegations will be heading to the Italian capital, including Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the Prince of Wales.
The Catholic church’s first Latin American pope died on Monday aged 88, less than a month after spending weeks in hospital with severe pneumonia.
After four days of silence, the Israeli prime minister offered his condolences to the pontiff, who had repeatedly condemned the war in Gaza.
Veronique Montes-Coulomb, a tourist from Toulouse in France who attended the lying in state on Thursday at St Peter’s, said she had been at the mass on Easter Sunday – the pontiff’s last public outing.
“The State of Israel expresses its deepest condolences to the Catholic church and the Catholic community worldwide at the passing of Pope Francis,” Benjamin Netanyahu wrote on X. “May he rest in peace.”
“We saw the pope passing by in the popemobile, he seemed relatively healthy, and we were surprised to learn that he had died on Monday morning,” she told AFP.
Israel is not sending a senior official to the funeral, although its ambassador in Rome will attend.
The Argentine pontiff, who had long suffered failing health, defied doctors’ orders by appearing at Easter, the most important moment in the Catholic calendar.
The funeral requires a huge and complex security operation in the Vatican and Rome involving thousands of Italian police and military, as well the Vatican’s Swiss Guards, the smallest army in the world. Soldiers in St Peter’s Square have been equipped with guns that shoot down drones, while rooftop snipers and fighter jets are on standby.
Condolences have flooded in from around the world for the Jesuit, an energetic reformer who championed those on the fringes of society in his 12 years as head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics. He used his last speech to rail against those who stir up “contempt … towards the vulnerable, the marginalised and migrants”.
Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the camerlengo running the Vatican’s day-to-day affairs until a new pope is elected, will preside over the so-called rite of the sealing of the coffin on Friday evening.
At least 130 foreign delegations are expected at his funeral, including Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, and Britain’s Prince William, and a no-fly zone will be in force.
Francis’s funeral mass will begin at 10am in St Peter’s Square on Saturday and is expected to attract 200,000 pilgrims. His simple wooden coffin will then be driven slowly to Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica, about 2.5 miles away in Rome’s Esquilino neighbourhood.
The pope’s coffin was set before St Peter’s altar for his three days of lying in state, with Francis dressed in his papal vestments – a red chasuble, white mitre and black shoes.
Francis will be buried in the ground, his undecorated tomb marked with just one word: Franciscus. People will be able to visit the tomb from Sunday morning.
“It was a brief but intense moment next to his body,” Italian Massimo Palo, 63, told AFP after his visit. “He was a pope amongst his flock, amongst his people, and I hope the next papacies will be a bit like his.”
The funeral mass will be led by the Italian cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the dean of the college of cardinals, in what is expected to be a solemn ceremony.
Italy’s civil protection agency estimates that “several hundred thousand” people will descend on Rome on what was already set to be a busy weekend due to a public holiday on Friday.
“What surprised me was how determined he was to serve the church and love his people with all his energy, to the very end,” the cardinal said in an interview with La Repubblica published on Friday.
After the funeral, Francis’s coffin will be driven at a walking pace to be buried at his favourite church, Rome’s papal basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. He will be interred in the ground, his simple tomb marked with just one word: Franciscus. People will be able to visit the tomb from Sunday morning.
Amid the funeral planning, speculation is rife about who will succeed Francis. Cardinals approved nine days of mourning from the date of the funeral, with a conclave – the secret election process to choose a new pope – therefore not expected to begin before 5 May.
Following that, all eyes will turn to the process to choose Francis’s successor. Cardinals from around the world have been returning to Rome for the funeral and the conclave to elect a new pontiff. In the absence of a pope, the cardinals have been meeting every day to agree the next steps, with another meeting due on Friday.
There is no clear frontrunner, although Luis Antonio Tagle, a reformer from the Philippines, and Pietro Parolin, from Italy, who were among the procession, are early favourites.
They have yet to announce a date for the conclave, but it must begin no fewer than 15 days and no more than 20 days after a pope’s death. Only those under the age of 80 – currently about 135 cardinals – are eligible to vote.
