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As bells tolled and the coffin emerged from the gloom of the basilica, a hush fell across St Peter’s Square, in keeping with traditional solemnity, but the crowd itched to break it. Death had silenced Pope Francis but those who had come to see him off were not going to stifle their love or grief. He had requested a simple burial, not a silent one.
The quiet held while 14 pallbearers placed the wooden casket on the edge of the stairs for the start of the mass and continued while cardinals streamed to one side to form a blazing red bloc. On the other side was an array of dark-suited prime ministers, presidents, princes, princesses, kings and queens.
And in front, packed all the way down Via della Conciliazione to the edge of the Tiber, crowds gathered under Rome’s azure spring sky on Saturday to bid farewell to a pope who was number 266, yet a unique one. The first South American, the first Jesuit, the first to say of gay people, “who am I to judge?”
Before his death on Easter Monday at the age of 88, Francis had simplified papal funeral rites but the Vatican still uncorked centuries of tradition and grandeur with magnificent robes, capes and headgear – from the air, the piazza resembled a shimmering quilt of black, white, scarlet, gold and purple.
And still, while Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the dean of the College of Cardinals, began the liturgy, the crowd stayed silent. Most of the mass was in Latin and punctuated with hymns and Gregorian chants. A light breeze ruffled an open gospel placed on the coffin.
Battista Re is 92, but when he launched into the homily, a warm, personalised tribute to Francis made in Italian, he suddenly sounded younger, and that was when the crowd broke into cheers and applause.
The pontiff was a pope of the people, a pastor who knew how to reach the “least among us”, a man who believed that the church was “a home for all, a home with its doors always open”, said the cardinal.
When he cited Lampedusa – the Italian island synonymous with the pope’s outreach to migrants and refugees – the applause swelled. And did so again when he mentioned Francis’s visit to the border between Mexico and the US, and recited the pope’s mantra: “Build bridges, not walls.”
The US president, Donald Trump, did not flinch, nor did Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, two leaders associated with hardline policies on migrants. They were ringed by dozens of other political leaders, and there was safety in numbers because, for all their tributes to Francis, few, if any, had heeded his exhortations to welcome migrants. It was an irony of his 12-year papacy that while he beseeched the world to open its heart, borders tightened.
For many in the crowd, the pope’s key legacy was advocacy for the vulnerable and downtrodden. “A good pope. He had a heart,” said Martin Joseph, 33, a pizza chef from India who lives in Italy. Andrej Kalamen, 47, a priest from Slovakia, said the pope abjured dogma. “He was a pastoral priest, he loved people.”
Alison Briggs-McMullen, from Northumberland in the UK, had come with her mother to Italy’s capital to celebrate her 27th birthday but felt drawn to the funeral. “It felt right to be here and be part of a momentous occasion. We’re not Catholic but here to pay our respects and soak up the atmosphere.”
Tiziana, a 69-year-old Roman, said she was not a believer in God but had faith in humanity and the goodness of Francis. “The god is inside. I’m here to be with the people, and to keep the pope company.”
She lauded the funeral planners. “Rome is not always well organised but today we are playing it well.” Others also marvelled at the city’s transformation, almost overnight, into a well-drilled host with thousands of police, giant screens, portable loos and miles of fencing and tape for the funeral procession route.
When the funeral ended, even cardinals joined in the applause as the coffin briefly returned to St Peter’s Basilica before crossing the city, a final journey in a popemobile past waving, tearful crowds, and the Colosseum, where early Christians were martyred.
Adam Woolstenhulme, a tourist from Idaho in the US, was among those lining the route. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It feels that Rome is the most important city in the world today and that this is the most important street in the entire world.”
The sentiment began to dissolve as Trump and other leaders dispersed and headed for the airport, ending the spectacle, or illusion, of global communion.
Before and after trips, Francis used to visit the papal basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore on the Esquiline Hill, and it was here that he asked to be buried. As pallbearers carried the coffin inside, a sign on a building opposite caught the mood: “Grazie Francesco.” The coffin was lowered into a niche – formerly used to store candlestick holders – and the undecorated tomb was inscribed with a single word, the papal name in Latin: Franciscus.
