Pope Francis, whodied on Monday morningat the age of 88, will be laid to rest on Saturday in Rome. His funeral is expected to draw dignitaries from across the world, as well as tens of thousands of faithful. This is what is expected to happen on the day, and what may come next for the Catholic church.
The funeral will be held in St Peter’s Square in Rome at 10am local time. The outdoor service, which will be led by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the dean of the college of cardinals, is expected to be attended by dignitaries from 170 foreign delegations, as well as tens of thousands of ordinary people wanting to pay their respects.
About 50,000 people attended thefuneral of Francis’s immediate predecessor, Pope Benedict, which was also held in St Peter’s Square, in January 2023.
In the run-up to Francis’s funeral, tens of thousands lined up to pay their respects to the pope as his body lay in state in an open wooden coffin in St Peter’s Basilica from Wednesday morning. Within the first 24 hours, more than 50,000 people had filed past the coffin.
Donald Trump – the US president whose policies on immigration and mass deportations were criticised by the late pope – will be in Rome for the funeral, accompanied by his wife, Melania.
Others expected to attend include the UN secretary general, António Guterres; Emmanuel Macron, the president of France; Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine; Sergio Mattarella and Giorgia Meloni, the president and prime minister of Italy, respectively; King Felipe and Queen Letizia of Spain; Michael D Higgins and Micheál Martin, the president and taoiseach of Ireland, respectively; and, representing the UK, Keir Starmer, the prime minister, and Prince William. Andrzej Duda, the president of Poland, will be there, as will Portugal’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and its prime minister, Luís Montenegro.
Among those attending from Latin America are the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Javier Milei – the president of Francis’s native Argentina who had previously referred to the late pontiff as a “communist”, an “imbecile” and a “lefty son of a bitch”. The Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, will not attend but will be represented by the country’s interior minister, Rosa Icela Rodríguez.
Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the president of the Philippines –which has one of the world’s largest Catholic populations– also will be in Rome.
Russia will be represented by its culture minister, Olga Lyubimova. The country’s president, Vladimir Putin, has not travelled to a western country since ordering the invasion of Ukraine three years ago and issubject to an international criminal court arrest warrantfor the alleged forced deportation of Ukrainian children.
Among the opposition party leaders attending are Alberto Núñez Feijóo of Spain’s conservative People’s party, and Jordan Bardella, the president of France’s far-right National Rally party. Despite his party’s anti-immigration stance, Bardella recently praised the late pope’s “constant attention to the forgotten and the dignity of the most vulnerable”.
Barriers have already been installed inside and outside St Peter’s Basilica to control the crowds, security checks have been increased and staff have been distributing bottles of water due to the warm weather.
State-of-the-art defence and security mechanisms have been deployed across Rome and in the skies above the capital, including anti-drone weaponry, a no-fly zone patrolled by fighter jets, and sophisticated jamming technologies. Anti-terrorism and anti-sabotage units are also already on the ground.
The basilica and the surrounding area are being patrolled by more than 2,000 police officers between now and the end of the conclave that is expected to take place early next month in order to choose Francis’s successor. They will be supported by 400 traffic police officers who will help manage the movement of the diplomatic convoys.
No – quite deliberately not. Francis chose to break with the traditions surrounding papal funerals in April last year when he approved a set of simplified rules that allow a pope to be “laid out and buried like any son or daughter of the church”, without the use of an elevated bier topped with cushions. Or, as Francis himself put it: “With dignity, but not on cushions. In my opinion, the ritual was too ornate.”
Papal funerals have traditionally involved three coffins, with the body of the pope placed in a coffin of cypress wood, which is then placed inside one of lead, which, in turn, is put inside a coffin of oak. Francis, however, stipulated that he wanted his body to be placed in a single, simple coffin made of wood and lined with zinc.
Francis’s choice of burial place marks another break with tradition. Most popes have decided to be laid to rest in the grottoes beneath St Peter’s. But Francis opted instead for the Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica in Rome’s Esquilino neighbourhood, which lies outside the Vatican.
The Marian shrine, which houses a celebrated icon of the Virgin Mary and a relic of the manger in which baby Jesus was laid, was a favourite spot of Francis’s, and he often prayed there before and after his trips abroad.
“As I’ve always promised the Virgin, the place is already prepared,”he said in an interview with Mexican TVtwo years ago. “I want to be buried in Santa Maria Maggiore because it’s my great devotion.”
Francis requested that he be buried “in the ground, without particular decoration” but with the inscription of his papal name in Latin: Franciscus.
Once the funeral mass has finished, Francis’s coffin will be taken, in procession, to Santa Maria Maggiore. The Vatican announced that people will be able to visit Francis’s tomb in the basilica from Sunday morning.
The funeral will mark the beginning of theNovemdiales– the nine days of mourning and masses offered for the repose of Francis’s soul. Attention will then turn to the business of choosing his successor.
Theconclave held to appoint a new popeusually begins between 15 and 20 days after the previous pontiff’s death. Once assembled in the Sistine Chapel, 135 cardinal electors – cardinals under the age of 80 – will swear an oath of absolute secrecy and begin their deliberations.
After each round of secret voting, the ballot cards are burned and chemicals added to tint the smoke black or white. Black smoke emerging from the 60ft chimney lets those gathered outside know that the ballot has proved inconclusive. White smoke means the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics have a new pope.
As the recent film Conclave showed, predicting the next pope is not a straightforward matter.
Francis – the first Jesuit pope – was a surprise choice; a factthe Argentinian immediately acknowledged when he joked that his fellow cardinals had had to “go to the end of the earth”to find a new bishop of Rome.
Butamong the names frequently mentioned as possible successorsare Matteo Zuppi, a progressive Italian cardinal; Pietro Parolin, who serves as the Vatican’s secretary of state; and Luis Antonio Tagle, from the Philippines.