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The Vatican will make final preparations on Friday for Pope Francis’s funeral as the last of the huge crowds of mourners file through St Peter’s Basilica to view his open coffin.
Many of the 50 heads of state and 10 monarchs attending Saturday’s ceremony in St Peter’s Square, who include US president Donald Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, are expected to arrive in Rome on Friday.
Italian and Vatican authorities have placed the area around St Peter’s under tight security before the funeral, with drones blocked, snipers on roofs and fighter jets on standby.
Tens of thousands of people have already queued for hours to pay their last respects to Francis, whose coffin will be closed at 8pm local time in a ceremony attended by senior cardinals. Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the camerlengo who is running the Vatican’s day-to-day affairs until a new pope is elected, will preside over the so-called “Rite of the Sealing of the Coffin”.
The Catholic church’s first Latin American pope died on Monday aged 88, less than a month after spending weeks in hospital with severe pneumonia.
Veronique Montes-Coulomb, a tourist from Toulouse in France who attended the lying in state on Thursday at St Peter’s, said she had been at the mass on Easter Sunday – the pontiff’s last public outing.
“We saw the pope passing by in the popemobile, he seemed relatively healthy, and we were surprised to learn that he had died on Monday morning,” she told AFP.
The Argentine pontiff, who had long suffered failing health, defied doctors’ orders by appearing at Easter, the most important moment in the Catholic calendar.
Condolences have flooded in from around the world for the Jesuit, an energetic reformer who championed those on the fringes of society in his 12 years as head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics. He used his last speech to rail against those who stir up “contempt … towards the vulnerable, the marginalised and migrants”.
At least 130 foreign delegations are expected at his funeral, including Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, and Britain’s Prince William, and a no-fly zone will be in force.
The pope’s coffin was set before St Peter’s altar for his three days of lying in state, with Francis dressed in his papal vestments – a red chasuble, white mitre and black shoes.
“It was a brief but intense moment next to his body,” Italian Massimo Palo, 63, told AFP after his visit. “He was a pope amongst his flock, amongst his people, and I hope the next papacies will be a bit like his.”
Italy’s civil protection agency estimates that “several hundred thousand” people will descend on Rome on what was already set to be a busy weekend due to a public holiday on Friday.
After the funeral, Francis’s coffin will be driven at a walking pace to be buried at his favourite church, Rome’s papal basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. He will be interred in the ground, his simple tomb marked with just one word: Franciscus. People will be able to visit the tomb from Sunday morning.
Following that, all eyes will turn to the process to choose Francis’s successor. Cardinals from around the world have been returning to Rome for the funeral and the conclave to elect a new pontiff. In the absence of a pope, the cardinals have been meeting every day to agree the next steps, with another meeting due on Friday.
They have yet to announce a date for the conclave, but it must begin no fewer than 15 days and no more than 20 days after a pope’s death. Only those under the age of 80 – currently about 135 cardinals – are eligible to vote.
