The funeral for Pope Francis will follow a centuries-old tradition, with rituals spanning several days and a viewing of his body that will allow mourners from around the world to honor him in person before he is laid to rest. The timing of the funeral has yet to be announced.
Inside the Vatican, the ritual begins when the director of the Vatican’s health department is summoned to certify the pontiff’s death. The camerlengo, who runs the Vatican from the moment a pope dies until the election of a successor, removes the papal ring from his finger.
Known as the fisherman’s ring because it depicts St. Peter fishing from a boat, the papal ring is traditionally used to seal Vatican documents. It carries the pope’s name and is destroyed after his death. A new one is forged when the next pope is elected.
The pope’s body is brought to his private chapel.
The camerlengo subsequently seals the pope’s study and bedroom, which in Francis’ case were at Casa Santa Marta, a building on the edge of Vatican City. Soon after his election in 2013, Francis made the unprecedented decision to live and work from the Vatican’s spartan guesthouse, saying he didn’t want to be “isolated” inside the luxurious papal apartments.
All of the 252 cardinals across the globe traditionally receive an invitation from the dean of the College of Cardinals to travel to Rome after the pope’s death to attend the funeral and choose a new pontiff.
The body of Francis, treated and dressed in papal vestments and his head covered with a white bishop’s miter, is expected to lie in state inside his coffin at St. Peter’s Basilica a few days after his death to allow the faithful to bid farewell. International leaders are expected to attend the funeral.
The service, usually held between the fourth and the sixth day after the pope’s death, is marked by a public Mass held in front of St. Peter’s Basilica that is presided over by the dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re.
Previous popes were entombed in three coffins — one made of wood, another of lead and a third, again of wood. But in 2024, Francis simplified the rules for a papal funeral, to only use a wooden coffin lined in zinc.
The last pontiff to die was Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in late 2022. Tens of thousands of faithful attended his funeral on an unusually foggy morning, in stark contrast to the two million people who are estimated to have attended the funeral for Pope John Paul II, whose popular papacy stretched for 26 years, in 2005.
Benedict, who was pope for less than eight years, had lived as a pope emeritus inside the Vatican for almost a decade when he died.
Gaia Pianigiani is a reporter based in Italy, covering breaking news across Italy and Europe.
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