Mighty and meek bid farewell to Pope Francis at funeral

World leaders and Catholic faithful bade farewell to Pope Francis in a funeral today 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 200,000 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 sombre ceremony still had a festive mood, with mourners taking selfies amid the hymns as Francis' simple 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 the people's pope, 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 US-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.

Francis had choreographed the funeral himself when he revised and simplified the Vatican’s rites and rituals last year. His aim was to emphasise 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, honouring 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 simple wooden coffin before it was sealed Friday night.

Despite Francis’ focus on the powerless, the powerful were out in force at his funeral. US President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, UN 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.

The white facade of St. Peter's glowed pink as the sun rose today 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 being 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.

“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.”

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 laid to rest in St. Mary Major Basilica, 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-kilometre motorcade route that will bring Francis’ coffin from the Vatican through the centre 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, honouring the marginalized groups Francis prioritised 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.

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.

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 7pm on Friday (local time), mourners were turned away in droves.

By dawn today, 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 honour 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.”