Austen Ivereigh, biographer ofPope Francis, has been speaking to BBC News in the last few minutes noting that “what’s remarkable about what’s happening in these days is that we have the funeral of the pope in Easter Week.”
“This is incredibly unusual. I don’t know whether it’s ever happened before, becauseEaster week is all about celebrating the resurrection, and it’s also about the birth in the readings of the church … sothere’s something actually very, very powerful and very fittingabout burying, grieving, saying goodbye to the pope in this week,” he said.
Ivereigh, who saw Pope Francis’s body in the Santa Maria chapel last night, said it was “hard, but it was good to accept that he is gone, and that is what really these ceremonies, what we are going through these days are about: accepting that a death has happened and coming to terms with it.”
“For Catholics, this is an important part of …allowing ourselves to grieve, but also to believe that this is not the end,” he said.
In the meantime, first details are emerging as tothe scale of the logistics operation requiredfor this Saturday’s funeral, withover 170 foreign delegationsand around 200,000 faithful expected to come to theVatican.
The timing of the funeralcoincides with the Italian bank holiday, the Liberation Day, which falls on Friday and will see muted celebrations this year due to the national mourning.
Corriere della Serrais reporting thatsome of the most advanced defence and security mechanisms will be used to protect the faithful on Sunday,with elaborate jamming technologies, a no-fly zone over the city with enhanced air force monitoring in place, and heightened anti-terrorism alert measures.
The police is also working out how toprovide necessary support to all foreign delegations, and on top of thatpreparing for a hypothetical scenario in which an Italian cardinal gets picked as the new pope, which they expect would prompt more Italian faithful to descend on Rome.
Pope Francis’sbody will be moved toSt Peter’s Basilicaon Wednesday morning where it will lie in state for three days to allow Catholic faithful to pay their final respects ahead of a funeral expected to bring a host of world leaders includingKeir Starmer,Emmanuel MacronandDonald Trump.
The ceremony is scheduled tostart 9am Rome (8am BST), and will see Francis’s body leave the Santa Maria residence where he lived and move in a procession into St Peter’s Basilica, entering through the main entrance.
The body will lie in state until Friday 7pm local time, when the public mourning will end in preparation for the funeral on Saturday morning.
I will follow the ceremony and the latest reports from theVaticanand elsewhere for you.
It’sWednesday, 23 April 2025, it’sJakub Krupahere, and this isEurope Live.
Good morning.