Pope Francis was laid to rest in Rome Saturday after a Vatican funeral for the “pope among the people” attended by hundreds of thousands of mourners and world leaders including US President Donald Trump.
Around 400,000 people packed St Peter’s Square and lined the streets in Rome to say goodbye to the Argentine pontiff, a champion of the poor who had led the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics since 2013.
After a solemn funeral in front of hushed crowds, Francis’s plain wooden coffin — a testament to a life of humility — was driven slowly to Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore church, where he will be interred in a private ceremony.
Guatemalan Maria Vicente, 52, holding a rosary in her hands, cried as she watched the coffin being carried into Santa Maria Maggiore, the pope’s favourite Rome church.
“It made me very sad. It’s touching, that he left us like that,” she said.
Fourteen white-gloved pallbearers carried the coffin into the church, as children placed baskets of flowers at the altar and a choir sang prayers.
The marble tomb of the Catholic Church’s first Latin American leader is inscribed with just one word: “Franciscus”, his name in Latin.
More than 50 heads of state were present at the funeral, including Trump — who met several world leaders in a corner of the basilica beforehand, notably Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, in their first face-to-face since their Oval Office clash in February.
‘An open heart’
Francis, who died on Monday aged 88, was “a pope among the people, with an open heart”, who strove for a more compassionate, open-minded Catholic Church, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re said in his homily.
There was applause from the masses gathered under bright blue skies as he hailed the pope’s “conviction that the Church is a home for all, a home with its doors always open”.
Francis sought to steer the centuries-old Church into a more inclusive direction during his 12-year papacy, and his death prompted a global outpouring of emotion.
Maria Mrula, 28, a student from Germany, said she drove 16 hours to be at the funeral.
“Giving to the poor and being with the poor”, Francis had inspired many, she said.
“The Church is alive,” she said. “It was great being here.”
Italian and Vatican authorities mounted a major security operation for the ceremony, with fighter jets on standby and snipers positioned on roofs surrounding the tiny city state.
Red-robed cardinals and purple-hatted bishops sat on one side of the altar in St Peter’s Square during the funeral, with world dignitaries sitting opposite.
In front of the altar lay the pope’s simple cypress coffin, inlaid with a pale cross.
‘Bridges not walls:’
The funeral sets off the first of nine days of official Vatican mourning for Francis, who took over following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI in 2013.
After the mourning, cardinals aged under 80 will gather for the conclave to elect a new pope from among their number.
Many of Francis’s reforms angered traditionalists, while his criticism of injustices, from the treatment of migrants to the damage wrought by global warming, riled many world leaders.
Yet the former archbishop of Buenos Aires’s compassion and charisma earned him global affection and respect.
“His gestures and exhortations in favour of refugees and displaced persons are countless,” Battista Re said.
He recalled the first trip of Francis’s papacy to Lampedusa, an Italian island that is often the first port of call for migrants crossing the Mediterranean, as well as when the Argentine celebrated mass on the border between Mexico and the US.
Trump’s administration drew the pontiff’s ire for its mass deportation of migrants, but the president has paid tribute to “a good man” who “loved the world”.
Making the first foreign trip of his second term, Trump sat among dozens of leaders from other countries — many of them keen to bend his ear over a trade war he unleashed, among other subjects.
