Faithful flock on last day to pay respects to Pope
Joshua McElwee and Giulia Segreti |
Tens of thousands of mourners have filed into St Peter’s Basilica on the last day to pay final respects to Pope Francis before his funeral.
Long queues snaked around St Peter’s Square and the surrounding roads on Friday before being funnelled through the heart of the basilica in a single column leading to the central altar, where Francis’s open-topped coffin is placed on a dais.
The basilica was open for most of Thursday evening into Friday morning, shutting its doors for only three hours overnight.
The body of the 88-year-old Pope, who died on Monday in his rooms at the Vatican’s Santa Marta guesthouse after suffering a stroke, was brought to St Peter’s in a solemn procession on Wednesday.
Since then, about 150,000 people from all over the world have bid farewell to the pontiff, the Vatican said.
Francis, who was pope since 2013, was the first pontiff from the Western hemisphere and was known for an unusually charming, and even humorous, demeanour.
His 12-year papacy was sometimes turbulent, with Francis seeking to overhaul a divided institution but battling with traditionalists who opposed his many changes.
“He humanised the church, without desacralising it,” said Cardinal Francois-Xavier Bustillo, who leads the Church on the French island of Corsica.
Queues on Friday morning stretched halfway down the main boulevard leading through Rome into the Vatican.
People were pressing forward slowly, some waiting hours, in order to have a few minutes inside to pay their respects to Francis.
Vatican officials plan to end viewings at 7pm on Friday before a formal rite to seal the late Pope’s coffin.
The Vatican said it would close access to the line to enter the basilica about 6pm.
“What surprised me was how determined he was to serve the church and love his people with all his energy, to the very end,” Italian Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re – the ceremonial leader of the College of Cardinals and a retired Vatican official – told Italian daily La Repubblica in an interview published on Friday.
A conclave to choose a new pontiff is unlikely to start before May 6.
In the meantime, the world’s Catholic cardinals have assumed temporary control of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church.
Cardinals present in Rome are convening almost daily, primarily to discuss logistical matters, in what is called a “general congregation”.
Some 149 of the world’s 252 cardinals were present for the meeting on Thursday, the Vatican said, with dozens more expected to have arrived in Rome for Friday’s gathering.
Francis’s coffin will be sealed in a private ceremony on Friday evening led by eight Catholic cardinals, including a US prelate who has faced criticism over his handling of sexual abuse cases.
Among those also present will be the late Pope’s secretaries.
Rome is bracing for the arrival of hundreds of high-profile delegations attending Saturday’s funeral, including US President Donald Trump, who will be flying into the Italian capital late on Friday.
Authorities have started ramping up security for the ceremony, with snipers on rooftops, drones watching from the sky and an army device readied to neutralise hostile flying objects.
The heart of Rome is expected to be closed to traffic on Saturday to allow a funeral motorcade carrying the Pope’s remains to make its way slowly to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore (St Mary Major), where Francis, in a break from tradition, asked to be buried instead of St Peter’s Basilica.
The Pope’s tomb will be in a niche in a side aisle of the basilica, with just the word “Franciscus”, his name in Latin, engraved on the marble.
Reuters
