VATICAN CITY — World leaders and ordinary Catholics bid Pope Francis farewell at a funeral on Saturday that highlighted his concern for those on the margins and reflected his desire to be remembered as a simple pastor.
Though presidents and princes attended the Mass in St. Peter’s Square, prisoners and migrants greeted Francis’ coffin at his final resting place in a basilica located across town.
According to Vatican estimates, approximately 250,000 people attended the funeral Mass at the Vatican, while another 150,000 lined the motorcade route through downtown Rome to witness the first funeral procession for a pope in a century.
They clapped and cheered “Papa Francesco” as his simple wooden coffin was driven by a modified popemobile to St. Mary Major Basilica, about 6 kilometers (3.5 miles) away.
As the bells tolled, the pallbearers carried the coffin past several dozen migrants, prisoners, and homeless people holding white roses outside the basilica. Once inside, the pallbearers paused in front of the Virgin Mary icon that Francis adored.
Four children placed the roses at the foot of the altar before cardinals performed his burial rite in a nearby niche.
“I’m so sorry that we’ve lost him,” said Mohammed Abdallah, a 35-year-old Sudanese migrant who was among those who greeted Francis at his final resting place. “Francis helped so many people, refugees like us, and many other people in the world.”
Earlier, during the Vatican Mass, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re praised history’s first Latin American pontiff as a pope of the people, a pastor who could communicate with the “least among us” in an informal, spontaneous manner.
“He was a pope among the people, with an open heart towards everyone,” said the 91-year-old dean of the College of Cardinals in a deeply personal sermon. He drew applause from the audience when he described Francis’ unwavering concern for migrants, which he demonstrated by celebrating Mass at the US-Mexico border and visiting a refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece, where he 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, noting that the Argentine pontiff traveled to “the most peripheral of the peripheries of the world.”
An extraordinary meeting about Ukraine on the sidelines
Despite Francis’ emphasis on the powerless, the powerful turned out in droves at his funeral. U.S. President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer led over 160 official delegations, alongside Prince William and continental European royals. Given Francis’ nationality, Argentine President Javier Milei felt a sense of pride, even if the two did not get along well, and the pope alienated many in his homeland by never returning.
In an unprecedented move, Trump and Zelenskyy met privately on the sidelines. A photograph showed the two men sitting alone, facing each other and hunched over on chairs in St. Peter’s Basilica, where Francis frequently preached about the need for a peaceful resolution to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Tens of thousands flocked before dawn to the Vatican
Francis personally choreographed the funeral when he revised and simplified the Vatican’s rites and rituals last year. His goal was to emphasize the pope’s status as a mere pastor rather than “a powerful man of this world.”
It reflected Francis’ 12-year project to fundamentally reform the papacy, emphasizing priests as servants and building “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, honoring St. Francis of Assisi “who had the heart of the poor of the world,” according to the official decree of the pope’s life, which was placed in his casket.
The white facade of St. Peter’s glowed pink as the sun rose Saturday, and throngs of mourners rushed into the square to secure a seat for the Mass. Giant television screens were installed along the surrounding streets for those who were unable to get close.
Police helicopters whirled overhead as part of the massive security operation launched by Italian authorities, which included over 2,500 police officers, 1,500 soldiers, and a torpedo ship off the coast, according to Italian media.
Many mourners had already planned to visit Rome this weekend for the now-postponed Holy Year canonization of Carlo Acutis, the first millennial saint. Scouts and youth church groups outnumbered nuns and seminarians by a large margin.
“He was a very charismatic pope, very human, very kind, and above all very human,” said Miguel Vaca, a Peruvian pilgrim who had spent the night near the piazza. “It’s very emotional to say goodbye to him.”
A special relationship with the basilica
Francis, the first Jesuit pope, died on Easter Monday at the age of 88, after suffering a stroke while recovering from pneumonia.
Francis had a soft spot for St. Mary Major, which houses a Byzantine-style icon of the Madonna known as the Salus Populi Romani. He would pray at the icon before and after each of his foreign trips as Pope.
The popemobile that transported his coffin there was designed for one of those trips, Francis’ 2016 visit to Mexico, and was modified to carry a coffin.
The basilica’s association with Francis’ Jesuit religious order added to its symbolic significance. St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, held his first Mass in the basilica on Christmas Day, 1538.
The basilica also houses the tombs of seven other popes, but this was the first papal burial outside the Vatican since Pope Leo XIII, who died in 1903 and was buried in another Roman basilica in 1924.
Following the funeral, preparations can begin in earnest to launch the centuries-old process of electing a new pope, a conclave that will most likely begin in early May. In the meantime, the Vatican is led by a small group of cardinals, including Re, who is organizing the secret voting in the Sistine Chapel.
German Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who will participate in the conclave, stated that the outpouring of support for Francis at his funeral demonstrated the clear need for the next pope to carry on his legacy.
Crowds waited hours to bid farewell to Francis
Over three days this week, more than 250,000 people stood in line for hours to pay their final respects to Francis’ body as it lay in state in St. Peter’s Basilica. The Vatican kept the basilica open all night to accommodate them, but it wasn’t enough. When the doors closed to the general public at 7 p.m. Friday, a large number of mourners were turned away.
They were back by dawn Saturday, with some recalling Francis’ words from the first night of his election and throughout his papacy.
“We are here to honor him because he always said, ‘Don’t forget to pray for me,'” Nigerian Sister Christiana Neenwata said. “So we are also here to give to him this love that he gave to us.”
This story has been corrected to show that the popemobile that carried Francis’ coffin was built for his 2016 visit to Mexico, not his 2015 visit to the Philippines.