VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis is being laid to rest Saturday in a ceremony reflecting his priorities as pope and wishes as pastor: Presidents and princes will attend his funeral in St. Peter\u2019s Square, but prisoners and migrants will usher him into the basilica where he will be buried.
\nAs many as 200,000 people are expected to attend the funeral, which Francis choreographed himself when he revised and simplified the Vatican\u2019s rites and rituals last year. His aim was to emphasize the pope\u2019s role as a mere priest and not \u201ca powerful man of this world,\u201d the Vatican said.
\nIt was a reflection of Francis\u2019 12-year project to radically reform the papacy, to emphasize its pastors as servants, and to construct \u201ca poor church for the poor.\u201d It was a mission he articulated just days after his 2013 election and explained the name he chose as pope, in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, \u201cwho had the heart of the poor of the world,\u201d according to the official decree of the pope\u2019s life that was placed in his coffin Friday night.
\nNevertheless, the powerful will be in attendance Saturday. US President Donald Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron, the UN chief and European Union leaders are joining Prince William and the Spanish royal family in leading official delegations. Argentine President Javier Milei had the pride of place given Francis\u2019 Argentine nationality, even if the two didn\u2019t particularly get along and Francis alienated many Argentines by never returning home.<\/p>\n
Francis is breaking with recent tradition and will buried in the St. Mary Major Basilica, near Rome\u2019s main train station, where a simple underground tomb awaits him with just his name: Franciscus. As many as 300,000 people are expected to line the 4-kilometer (2.5 mile) motorcade route that will bring Francis\u2019 casket from the Vatican through the center of Rome to the basilica after the funeral.
\nFrancis, the first Latin American and first Jesuit pope, died Easter Monday at age 88 after suffering a stroke while recovering at home from pneumonia.
\nWith his funeral, preparations can now begin in earnest to host the centuries-old process of electing a new pope, a conclave that will likely begin in the first week of May. In the interim, the Vatican is being run by a handful of cardinals, key among them Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the 91-year-old dean of the College of Cardinals who is presiding at the funeral and organizing the secret voting in the Sistine Chapel.
\nCrowds waited hours in line to pay their respects to Francis
\nOver three days this week, more than 250,000 people stood for hours in line to pay their final respects while Francis\u2019 body lay in state in St. Peter\u2019s Basilica. The Vatican kept the doors open through the night to accommodate them.
\n\u201cHe was an excellent, humble person who changed many laws and always for the better,\u201d said a pilgrim from his native Argentina, Augustin Angelicola, as he waited on line. \u201cNow it is a sad thing for the whole world that all this has happened. We did not expect it, it had to happen but not so soon.\u201d
\nBut even with the expanded hours, it wasn\u2019t enough. When the Vatican closed the doors to the general public at 7 p.m. on Friday, mourners were turned away in droves.
\nA special relationship with the basilica
\nEven before he became pope, Francis had a particular affection for St. Mary Major. It is home to a Byzantine-style icon of the Madonna, the Salus Popoli Romani, to which Francis was particularly devoted, such that he would go pray before it before and after each of his foreign trips as pope.
\nHe decided to have his tomb located in a niche next to the chapel housing the icon, with a reproduction of his simple silver pectoral cross over the marble tombstone.
\nThe choice of the basilica is also symbolically significant given its ties to Francis\u2019 Jesuit religious order. St. Ignatius Loyola, who founded the Jesuits, celebrated his first Mass in the basilica on Christmas Day in 1538.
\nThe Vatican said 40 special guests would greet his casket on the piazza in front of the basilica, reflecting the marginalized groups Francis prioritized pope: homeless people and migrants, prisoners and transgender people.
\n\u201cThe poor have a privileged place in the heart of God,\u201d the Vatican quoted Francis as saying in explaining the choice. The actual burial will be private, presided over by cardinals and a few close aides.
\nItaly is deploying more than 2,500 police and 1,500 soldiers to provide security, which also includes stationing a torpedo ship off the coast, and putting squads of fighter jets on standby, Italian media reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis is being laid to rest Saturday in a ceremony reflecting his priorities as pope and wishes as pastor: Presidents and princes will attend his funeral in St. Peter\u2019s Square, but prisoners and migrants will usher him into the basilica where he will be buried. As many as 200,000 people are expected …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":80166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80169,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80154\/revisions\/80169"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}