April 29, 2025 // National

Pope Francis Laid to Rest

Cindy Wooden

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis was “a pope among the people, with an open heart toward everyone,” said Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, dean of the College of Cardinals, as he presided over the funeral of the pope, who died on Monday, April 21, at the age of 88.

And the people – an estimated 200,000 of them – were present as 14 pallbearers carried Pope Francis’ casket into St. Peter’s Square and set it on a carpet in front of the altar for the funeral Mass, which was held on Saturday, April 26.

His burial was scheduled for later the same day in Rome’s Basilica of St. Mary Major after being driven in a motorcade through the center of the city where he served as bishop from the day of his election to the papacy – March 13, 2013.

Security around the Vatican was tight, not only because of the number of mourners expected but especially because of the presence of kings, queens, presidents – including U.S. President Donald J. Trump – and prime ministers from more than 80 countries and official representatives from scores of other nations.

Also present were the residents of a Vatican palace Pope Francis had turned into a shelter for the homeless and the 12 Syrian refugees he brought to Rome with him from a refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos in 2016.

The Gospel reading at the funeral was John 21:15-19, where the Risen Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?” And when Peter says yes, Jesus tells him, “Feed my sheep.”

“Despite his frailty and suffering toward the end, Pope Francis chose to follow this path of self-giving until the last day of his earthly life,” Cardinal Re said in his homily. “He followed in the footsteps of his Lord, the Good Shepherd, who loved his sheep to the point of giving His life for them.”

The 91-year-old cardinal told the crowd that the image of Pope Francis that “will remain etched in our memory” was his appearance on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica the day before he died to give his Easter blessing urbi et orbi (“to the city and the world”) and then to ride in the popemobile among the people who had come to celebrate Christ’s victory over death.

“The outpouring of affection that we have witnessed in recent days following his passing from this earth into eternity tells us how much the profound pontificate of Pope Francis touched minds and hearts,” Cardinal Re said. The Vatican estimated that 250,000 people – many of whom waited in line for three or four hours – filed past the late pope’s body in St. Peter’s Basilica April 23-25.

Within the Church, the cardinal said, “the guiding thread” of Pope Francis’ ministry was his “conviction that the Church is a home for all, a home with its doors always open.”

For Pope Francis, he said, the Church was a “field hospital,” one “capable of bending down to every person, regardless of their beliefs or condition, and healing their wounds.”

With Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Russian Minister of Culture Olga Lyubimova seated near the altar, Cardinal Re said that “faced with the raging wars of recent years, with their inhuman horrors and countless deaths and destruction, Pope Francis incessantly raised his voice imploring peace and calling for reason and honest negotiation to find possible solutions.”

‘”Build bridges, not walls’ was an exhortation he repeated many times, and his service of faith as successor of the Apostle Peter always was linked to the service of humanity in all its dimensions,” the cardinal said.

Cardinal Re also recalled Pope Francis’ constant concern for migrants and refugees from his first papal trip outside of Rome to pray for migrants who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, his visit to Lesbos, and his celebration of Mass in 2016 on the U.S.-Mexican border.

At the end of the funeral Mass, Cardinal Baldassare Reina, papal vicar of Rome, offered special prayers for the city’s deceased bishop, Pope Francis. Then Eastern Catholic patriarchs and major archbishops gathered around the casket and led funeral prayers from the Byzantine tradition in honor of the pastor of the universal Catholic Church.

Sister Norma Pimentel, a Missionary of Jesus and director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, had knelt in prayer before the body of Pope Francis on Friday, April 25, and was present for the funeral.

“The funeral of Pope Francis is a very important part of who we are as people of faith,” she told Catholic News Service. “We walk together, we cry together, we work together … doing what we believe is important in our lives as people of faith, and we say farewell together at the end.”

The funeral, she said, is a time “to join him in this last farewell and say thank you – thank you for being you, for being there with us, and we’ll see you.”

Sister Pimentel is known especially for her work with migrants and refugees, a ministry close to the heart of Pope Francis.

“He was all about making sure that we understood the importance” of welcoming newcomers, she said. His message was: “Please open your hearts. Please care for them. That’s all they’re asking.”

Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, also prayed alongside the pope’s body on April 25 as it lay in state in St. Peter’s Basilica. “It was an important moment of confirming the news that I had heard but did not want to believe” – that the pope had died.

Pope Francis “had played such an important role in my life as a mentor, as a teacher,” the cardinal said. “It was really a 20-year friendship.”

“We have many reasons to grieve, but we have every reason to hope,” said the cardinal, who concelebrated the funeral Mass and would be among the cardinals voting to elect a new pope.

Cardinal Tobin said he thought Pope Francis’ lasting legacy would be the call to be “a synodal Church,” one where every person takes responsibility for the Church’s mission and where all members listen to one another and to the Holy Spirit.

“That kind of Church is really necessary to bring to fruition all of his other prophetic teachings,” the cardinal said.

“Without a synodal Church,” he said, it will be difficult to put into practice Pope Francis’ teaching on the environment, on dialogue and human fraternity, and even on sharing the joy of the Gospel.

The casket bearing the body of Pope Francis made its final journey through the streets of Rome accompanied by applause and shouts of gratitude from thousands of mourners.

After the funeral Mass, pallbearers carried Pope Francis’ coffin through St. Peter’s Basilica, stopping briefly at the steps leading to St. Peter’s tomb before placing it on a retrofitted popemobile parked outside.

Hundreds awaited outside and applauded as the vehicle, accompanied by four police officers on motorbikes, left the grounds of Vatican City for the last time.

According to the Vatican and Italian police, some 150,000 people watched the pope’s casket pass by.

Along the wide boulevard in front of Torre Argentina, where Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C., tourists and bystanders packed the streets, some teetering on top of the stone walls around the ancient site. Residents were leaning out of their upper-story apartment windows, everyone camera-ready. When the motorcade passed, people clapped and cheered, some shouting “Grazie, Papa Francesco” (“Thank you, Pope Francis) and “Viva il papa.” (“Long live the pope”).

The cortegé bearing the first Jesuit pope passed by the Gesu Church, the mother church of the Society of Jesus in Rome’s historic center, where the body of the order’s founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola, is buried.

When the casket arrived at Rome’s Basilica of St. Mary Major, pallbearers carried it in a solemn procession down the central nave. Before reaching the pope’s final resting place, the pallbearers stopped in front of the chapel where Pope Francis often laid flowers and prayed before the icon of Mary. This time, two boys and two girls carried baskets of white flowers and set them before the altar under the Marian icon.

The pallbearers then made their way to Pope Francis’ tomb, where Cardinal Kevin J. Farrell presided over the burial rite.

The Basilica of St. Mary Major was dear to Pope Francis throughout his pontificate as he would often go to pray before the icon Salus Populi Romani (“Health – or Salvation – of the Roman People”), especially before and after his papal trips.

At a briefing with journalists outside the basilica April 26, Cardinal Rolandas Makrickas said the pope, who was initially reluctant to be buried outside of St. Peter’s Basilica, told him in May 2022 that the “Virgin Mary told me, ‘Prepare the tomb.’”

In his final testament, which was published by Vatican officials shortly after his death, the pope expressed his wish to be buried at the basilica dedicated to Mary to whom he had entrusted his “priestly and episcopal life and ministry.”