When and the way will Pope Francis be buried | EUROtoday

On Apr 22, 2025

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“Dhe is worthy funeral, but like any Christian: because the bishop of Rome is a pastor and a disciple, he is not one of the powerful of this world. Thus François evoked his funeral on page 259 of his autobiography Hopepublished in January 2025. Faithful to the end of his line of simplicity and counting, the Argentinian Pope had lightened the pontifical funeral by modifying, in November 2024, the Ordo Exsequiarum Romani Pontificis. No more traditional cypress, lead and oak coffins. The pontiff’s body will rest in a unique coffin in cypress wood and zinc.

Whoever preferred to stay during his pontificate in the austere Sainte-Marthe residence rather than in the pontifical apartments had asked to be buried not in Saint-Pierre-like his predecessors-, but at the Basilica Sainte-Marie-Majeure, where he used to pray-François had recently dropped flowers by leaving the hospital to thank the Madonna.

The building already houses the tombs of seven popes – the last to have been buried there is Clement IX, in 1669. “The Vatican is the home of my final service, not that of eternity,” wrote François in his book. Who wishes to rest “within the room the place the candelabras are actually shops”, after simplified funeral. “The funeral ritual,” said the pope, was overloaded and I prayed the master of ceremonies to lighten him. »»

A coffin placed on the ground

The first to have lightened the heavy protocol of pontifical funeral was Paul VI, buried on August 12, 1978. Before him, the funeral of the popes took place inside the majestic Saint-Pierre basilica and the coffin was placed in a spectacular catafalque. Another era …

François, “the pope of the poor and the outskirts”, died at the age of 88. François’ coffin, as for John Paul II and Benoît XVI, should be placed on the ground in the middle of the esplanade in front of the Saint-Pierre Basilica in Rome, with a book of the Gospels open to the pages swept by a light breeze. Which was present at the funeral of Pope John Paul II, on April 8, 2005, kept this striking image in memory. In the meantime, as tradition dictates, the body of Jorge Bergoglio will be exposed in the basilica, the open coffin, so that the faithful come to meditate.

Precision, given the striking images diffused by the Vatican, the body of the Pope is not embalmed. “Until Léon XIII, died in 1903,” explains Professor Giovanni Maria Vian, historian and former director of The Romano Osservatorethe daily life of the Vatican, the pope was indeed embalmed by following a procedure which, today, seems appalling to us and which had runs in ancient Egypt: we removed his viscera and were placed in vases preserved in the Holy Vincent-et-Anastase church, which faces the Trevi fountain. This practice was abolished by Pope Pie V.

Read too Five reasons for which Pope Francis will remain in historyIn the coffin, the body of the pope is coated with the pallium, namely the white fabric marked with five black crosses. Are added coins, medals struck during the pontificate and a text briefly taking up the highlights of its reign, which is called the “rogito” and which is placed in a metal cylinder. No papal farmhouse (the liturgical stick surmounted by a butt), however. No pope is buried with it.

A tomb “within the earth, easy, with out explicit ornament”

The “funeral of the Roman pontiff” are the object of chapter V in the first part of the Universi Dominici Gregis Apostolic Constitution, signed by John Paul II. Before the coffin was closed, an authentic report is written by the notary of the chapter of the basilica or by the archivist canon, provides for the text.

Then “a delegate from Cardinal Camerlingue and a delegate of the prefect of the Pontifical House written separately the documents which make it evidence that the burial took place; The first in the presence of members of the apostolic chamber, the second in the presence of the prefect of the pontifical house ”. The coffin was hitherto sealed “based on a particular ceremony”. But, specifies François in his autobiography, he did not wish “any ceremony for the fence of the cypress coffin”.

It will remain in the Saint-Pierre basilica during the night which separates it from the funeral proper, scheduled for Saturday at 10 am. Tradition, which draws its roots from ancient Rome, wants a delay of nine days to separate “the dying of the Roman pontiff” from its burial – this is called “the novendiales” – so that the cardinals celebrate, underlines the apostolic constitution, “the funeral companies for the remainder of its soul, based on the requirements of the Ordo Exsequiarum Romani Pontificis, to which they are going to be faithfully conform these of the ordo rituum conclavis ”.

Read too Pope Francis: the 5 black dots of a strain hold forth
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Answer

The sobriety required by François won’t stop, clearly, from giving all of the amplitude required by the gravity and solemn of the funeral, celebrated in entrance of an immense crowd, all of the cardinals and bishops, topped heads and presidents (Macron and Trump introduced their presence), the representatives of the States (183 in whole) that are in diplomatic relation Viewers world wide.

Then François will subsequently be part of his favourite church, Sainte-Marie-Majeure, and his tomb can be positioned “in the earth, simple, without any particular decoration”, as he requested in his will. And with the only inscription his identify in Latin, chosen in homage to Saint Francis d’Assise, in a sobriety all Franciscan: “Franciscus”.

https://www.lepoint.fr/monde/quand-et-comment-sera-enterre-le-pape-francois-22-04-2025-2587887_24.php