Mighty and meek bid farewell to Pope Francis at funeral where he is
remembered as pope of the people
[April 26, 2025]
By NICOLE WINFIELD and COLLEEN BARRY
VATICAN CITY (AP) — World leaders and Catholic faithful bade farewell to
Pope Francis in a funeral Saturday that highlighted his concern for the
“most peripheral of the peripheries” and reflected his wishes as pastor.
Though presidents and princes attended the Mass in St. Peter’s Square,
prisoners and migrants will welcome him at the basilica across town
where he will be buried.
Some 250,000 people flocked to the funeral, held on a brilliant spring
day that was supposed to have been a special Holy Year celebration for
adolescents. Perhaps because so many young people were on hand, the
somber ceremony still had a festive mood, with mourners taking selfies
amid the hymns as Francis' simple wooden coffin was brought out of St.
Peter’s Basilica at the start of the Mass.
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the 91-year-old dean of the College of
Cardinals, delivered a lengthy, spirited and highly personal homily, or
sermon. He eulogized Francis as a pope of the people, a pastor who knew
how to communicate to the “least among us” with an informal, spontaneous
style.
“He was a pope among the people, with an open heart towards everyone,”
Re said. He drew applause from the crowd when he recounted Francis'
constant concern for migrants, including when he celebrated Mass at the
U.S.-Mexico border and travelled to a refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece,
and brought 12 migrants home with him.
“The guiding thread of his mission was also the conviction that the
church is a home for all, a home with its doors always open,” Re said.
The Argentine pontiff choreographed the funeral himself when he revised
and simplified the Vatican’s rites and rituals last year. His aim was to
emphasize the pope’s role as a mere pastor and not “a powerful man of
this world.”
It was a reflection of Francis’ 12-year project to radically reform the
papacy, to stress priests as servants and to construct “a poor church
for the poor.” He articulated the mission just days after his 2013
election and it explained the name he chose as pope, honoring St.
Francis of Assisi “who had the heart of the poor of the world,”
according to the official decree of the pope's life that was placed in
his coffin before it was sealed Friday night.
Despite Francis’ focus on the powerless, the powerful were out in force
at his funeral. U.S. President Donald Trump and former President Joe
Biden, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, U.N. Secretary-General
António Guterres, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer joined Prince
William and European royals leading more than 160 official delegations.
Argentine President Javier Milei had the pride of place given Francis’
nationality, even if the two didn’t particularly get along and the pope
alienated many Argentines by never returning home.
Trump and Zelenskyy met privately on the sidelines of the funeral. A
photo showed the two men sitting alone, facing one another and hunched
over on chairs in St. Peter’s Basilica.
After the Mass, Francis’ coffin left the Vatican en route to his burial
place in St. Mary Major Basilica.
The white facade of St. Peter's glowed pink as the sun rose Saturday and
hordes of mourners rushed into the square. Giant television screens were
set up along the surrounding streets for those who couldn't get close.
The Mass and funeral procession across town — with Francis' coffin
carried on the open-topped popemobile he used during his 2015 trip to
the Philippines — were also broadcast live around the world.
Police helicopters whirled overhead, part of the massive security
operation Italian authorities mounted, including more than 2,500 police,
1,500 soldiers and a torpedo ship off the coast, Italian media reported.
Many mourners had planned to be in Rome anyway this weekend for the
now-postponed Holy Year canonization of the first millennial saint,
Carlo Acutis, and groups of scouts and youth church groups nearly
outnumbered the gaggles of nuns and seminarians.
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The book of the Gospels lies on the coffin of Pope Francis during
his funeral ceremony in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Saturday,
April 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
“He was a very charismatic pope, very human, very kind, above all
very human," said Miguel Vaca, a pilgrim from Peru who said he had
camped out near the piazza. "It is a very great emotion to say
goodbye to him.”
The poor and marginalized welcome him
Francis, the first Latin American and first Jesuit pope, died Easter
Monday at age 88 after suffering a stroke while recovering at home
from pneumonia.
Following his funeral, preparations can begin in earnest to launch
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 Re,
who is organizing the secret voting in the Sistine Chapel.
Francis is breaking with recent tradition and will be buried in St.
Mary Major, near Rome's main train station, where a simple tomb
awaits him with just his name: Franciscus. As many as 300,000 people
are expected to line the 6-kilometer (3.5-mile) motorcade route that
will bring Francis’ coffin from the Vatican through the center of
Rome to the basilica after the funeral.
Forty special guests, organized by the Vatican's Caritas charity and
the Sant'Egidio community, will greet his coffin at the basilica,
honoring the marginalized groups Francis prioritized as pope:
homeless people and migrants, prisoners and transgender people.
“The poor have a privileged place in the heart of God,” the Vatican
quoted Francis as saying in explaining the choice.
A special relationship with the basilica
Even before he became pope, Francis had a particular affection for
St. Mary Major, home to a Byzantine-style icon of the Madonna, the
Salus Populi Romani, to which Francis was particularly devoted. He
would pray before it before and after each of his foreign trips as
pope.
The choice of the basilica is also symbolically significant given
its ties to Francis’ Jesuit religious order. St. Ignatius Loyola,
who founded the Jesuits, celebrated his first Mass in the basilica
on Christmas Day in 1538.
Crowds waited hours to bid farewell to Francis
Over three days this week, more than 250,000 people stood for hours
in line to pay their final respects while Francis’ body lay in state
in St. Peter’s Basilica. The Vatican kept the basilica open through
the night to accommodate them, but it wasn’t enough. When the doors
closed to the general public at 7 p.m. on Friday, mourners were
turned away in droves.
By dawn Saturday, they were back and ready to say a final farewell,
some recalling the words he uttered the very first night of his
election and throughout his papacy.
“We are here to honor him because he always said ‘don’t forget to
pray for me,’” said Sister Christiana Neenwata from Biafrana,
Nigeria. “So we are also here to give to him this love that he gave
to us.”
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