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Monday brought sad news to the Catholic world – 88-year-old Pope Francis died at his residence in the Vatican, ending a 12-year pontificate that forever changed the face of the Roman Catholic Church. According to Reuters, the funeral of the Holy Father will take place on Saturday, 10:00 am, in St Peter’s Square in the Vatican. The ceremony will be led by 91-year-old Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re.
Francis breaks with tradition – for the last time
Although his body will be on display in St Peter’s Basilica until Friday for viewing, Francis’ will asked that he be buried not in the Vatican, as most of his predecessors had done, but in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, one of Rome’s main Christian churches, which was especially revered during his lifetime. The church, where the Pope prayed before every trip abroad and after every return, will now be his final resting place.
He asked for a “simple, unadorned burial” with a single Latin inscription, Franciscus. The last time a pope was buried outside the Vatican was in 1903, when Leo XIII was buried.
Last moments and farewell to the people
On Tuesday, the Vatican announced that Francis died at 7:35 a.m. local time after suffering a stroke and cardiac arrest. The death came quickly – the pontiff said goodbye to his faithful nurse, Massimiliano Strapetti, and fell into a coma.
In the open coffin in the chapel of his residence in Santa Marta House, Francis lay in papal vestments, rosary in hand. The first to pay their respects were Italian President Sergio Mattarella, other high-ranking officials, clergy and faithful.
World leaders gather in the Vatican
Donald Trump and his wife are expected to attend the funeral, despite their ideological differences with the Pope over migration. The presidents of France, Germany, Brazil, Poland, Ukraine, Argentina, the head of the European Commission, the British Prime Minister, and the King and Queen of Belgium will also attend.
The legacy of the pontificate
Pope Francis, the first Jesuit and the first Latin American to hold the Holy See, has left a complex but deeply human legacy. His pontificate has been marked by a fight for the rights of the poor, openness to the modern world, conflicts with traditionalists and attempts to reform the church’s outmoded structures.
Francis was a Pope who chose humility over luxury, gesture over protocol, faith over form. And even after his death, he left a message: power is service, and greatness is in simplicity.
