Mighty and meek bid farewell to Pope Francis at funeral where he is remembered as pope of the people

VATICAN CITY — World leaders and rank-and-file Catholic faithful bade farewell to Pope Francis in a funeral Saturday that highlighted his concern for people on the peripheries and reflected his wish to be remembered as a simple pastor. Though presidents and princes attended the Mass in St. Peter’s Square, prisoners and migrants welcomed Francis’ coffin at his final resting place in a basilica across town.

According to Vatican estimates, some 250,000 people flocked to the funeral Mass at the Vatican and 150,000 more lined the motorcade route through downtown Rome to witness the first funeral procession for a pope in a century. They clapped and cheered “Papa Francesco” as his simple wooden coffin traveled aboard a modified popemobile to St. Mary Major Basilica, some 6 kilometers (3.5-miles) away.

As bells tolled, the pallbearers brought the coffin past several dozen migrants, prisoners and homeless people holding white roses outside the basilica. Once inside, the pallbearers stopped in front of the icon of the Virgin Mary that Francis loved. Four children deposited the roses at the foot of the altar before cardinals performed the burial rite at his tomb in a nearby niche.

“I’m so sorry that we’ve lost him,” said Mohammed Abdallah, a 35-year-old migrant from Sudan who was one of the people who welcomed Francis to his final resting place. “Francis helped so many people, refugees like us, and many other people in the world.”

“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, noting that with his travels, the Argentine pontiff reached “the most peripheral of the peripheries of the world.”

An extraordinary meeting about Ukraine on the sidelines

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 continental European royals leading more than 160 official delegations. Argentine President Javier Milei had pride of place given Francis’ nationality, even if the two didn’t particularly get along and the pope alienated many in his homeland by never returning there.

In an extraordinary development, Trump and Zelenskyy met privately on the sidelines. A photo showed the two men sitting alone, facing one another and hunched over on chairs in St. Peter’s Basilica, where Francis often preached the need for a peaceful end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Tens of thousands flocked before dawn to the Vatican

Francis 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.

The white facade of St. Peter’s glowed pink as the sun rose Saturday and throngs of mourners rushed into the square to get a spot for the Mass. Giant television screens were set up along the surrounding streets for those who couldn’t get close.

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. 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 all night near the piazza. “It’s very emotional to say goodbye to him.”

A special relationship with the basilica

Francis, who was also the first Jesuit pope, died Easter Monday at age 88 after suffering a stroke while recovering from pneumonia.

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. He would pray before the icon before and after each of his foreign trips as pope.

The popemobile that brought his coffin there was made for one of those trips: Francis’ 2016 visit to Mexico, and was modified to carry a coffin.

The choice of the basilica was 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.

The basilica is the resting place of seven other popes, but this was the first papal burial outside the Vatican since Pope Leo XIII, who died in 1903 and was entombed in another Roman basilica in 1924.

Following the 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.

German Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who will participate in the conclave, said the outpouring of support for Francis at his funeral showed the clear need for the next pope to continue his legacy.

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. Friday, mourners were turned away in droves.

By dawn Saturday, they were back, some recalling the words Francis 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 Nigerian Sister Christiana Neenwata. “So we are also here to give to him this love that he gave to us.”