Pope Francis died on April 21 after 12 years in the papacy, and the Catholic Church ended its formal mourning period on Sunday. He was 88. The pontiff’s death triggered a wide range of centuries-old traditions, one of which is Novemdiales, a nine-day period of mourning that began with his funeral in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican.
Novemdiales scheduled daily masses inside St. Peter’s Basilica, each presided over by a different cardinal and dedicated to the late pope. Cardinal Dominique Mamberti, a senior deacon in the College of Cardinals, presided over Sunday’s mass. The College of Cardinals advises the Pope and oversees the process of electing a replacement when a position becomes vacant.
Hundreds of cardinals and laypeople packed the cathedral for the final event, as was the case with most processions held during the mourning period. The Vatican broadcast a livestream of the mass on Sunday, as it has done every day of Novemdiales.
Mamberti led the mass in Italian, while a choir sang hymns and a number of others approached the altar to sing or speak.
“We have all admired how Pope Francis, animated by the love of the Lord and carried by his grace, was faithful to his mission until the extreme consumption of his strength,” said Mamberti in a portion of the homily translated into English by a moderator. “He admonished the powerful, that they must obey god rather than man, and proclaimed to all humanity the joy of the gospel.”
Francis, who was remembered for challenging long-held church norms, died of a stroke on Easter Monday, which caused a coma and heart failure, according to a Vatican statement at the time.
In recent years, he had undergone two abdominal surgeries and suffered from numerous respiratory infections. The pope was hospitalized for five weeks in February and March after contracting bronchitis and, later, pneumonia.
The conclave to select Pope Francis’ successor will begin after Novemdiales. It officially begins on May 7, when a group of approximately 135 cardinal electors will isolate at the Vatican and begin an ancient ritual to determine who will be the next pope. Inside the Sistine Chapel, the cardinals will repeatedly vote for their preferred candidate or candidates until a single candidate receives a two-thirds-plus-one majority.
The archbishop of New York, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, spoke with reporters Sunday about the upcoming conclave but did not hint at any frontrunners emerging yet.
“In general congregations, you do not talk about candidates. “You talk about the beauty, the graces of Pope Francis, and the challenges of the church,” Dolan said, adding that some conversations between cardinals take place privately.
In terms of the qualities he seeks in the church’s next leader, Dolan stated that he hopes for “a pope who is like Jesus, because the pope is supposed to be the vicar of Christ on earth.”
“The first time Pope Francis spoke to us cardinals, he spoke so beautifully and humbly and simply, and I was sitting next to the Archbishop of Vienna Christoph Schonborn, and he had tears in his eyes,” Dolan told me. “He claimed, ‘He speaks like Jesus.'” I said, “I believe that is the job description.”