Francis set the degree for his personal mourning past due ultimate yr, when he authorized a simplified procedure for papal funeral rituals.
Simplicity, after all, is relative — on this case to the breathtaking grandeur bequeathed through centuries of Roman Catholic custom.
The procession above happened Wednesday morning, when Francis’ coffin was once carried from the Casa Santa Marta, the cardinals’ guesthouse the place he lived as an alternative of the regal papal flats, to St. Peter’s Basilica, the place his frame is to spend 3 days mendacity in state.
The pope’s stays will lie beneath the basilica’s 380-foot-high Renaissance dome, with its gilding and its stunning mosaics, in entrance of the bronze cover that Bernini made to brighten its excessive altar.
Nevertheless it rests there on a low pedestal, no longer a bier. And the plans disregarded a personal viewing on the Apostolic Palace for cardinals and different dignitaries, regardless that the coffin did spend a period for quiet farewells within the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta.
Nor will St. Peter’s be the general forestall. Francis requested to be buried on the Papal Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, the place he prayed ahead of and after each and every adventure of his papacy. His will specifies a easy tomb, “within the earth,” with a single-word inscription: “Franciscus.”
Elisabetta Povoledo, Emma Bubola and Alan Yuhas contributed reporting.
