Vatican: Pope Francis laid to rest as 400,000 mourn pope ‘with an open heart’

ROME, April 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Hundreds of thousands of mourners joined world leaders, including US President Donald Trump, to bid farewell Saturday to Pope Francis, a champion of the poor who strived to forge a more compassionate Catholic church.

The Vatican said 400,000 people packed St Peter’s Square and lined the streets of Rome for the funeral of the first Latin American leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

After a solemn funeral, the Argentine pontiff’s plain wooden coffin — a testament to a life of humility — was driven slowly to Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore church, where he was interred in a private ceremony.

Cardinals marked his coffin with red wax seals before it was lowered into a tomb set inside an alcove, according to images released by the Vatican.

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 is inscribed with just one word: “Franciscus”, his papal name in Latin.

Trump was among more than 50 heads of state at the funeral. He met several world leaders in a corner of the St Peter’s basilica before, notably Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, in their first face-to-face meeting since their Oval Office clash in February.

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, said Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re who led the service.

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 Church into a more inclusive direction during his 12-year-long papacy, and his death prompted a global outpouring of emotion.

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.

The funeral set off 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 elect a new pope from among their number.

Francis died of a stroke and heart failure less than a month after he left the hospital where he had battled pneumonia for five weeks.

His last public act, the day before his death, was an Easter Sunday blessing to the world, ending his papacy as he had begun it — with an appeal to protect the “vulnerable, the marginalised and migrants”.

Catholics around the world held events to watch the proceedings live, including in Buenos Aires, where Francis was born as Jorge Bergoglio in the poor neighbourhood of Flores in 1936.

“The pope showed us that there was another way to live the faith,” said Lara Amado, 25, in the Argentine capital. — NNN-AGENCIES

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