Adios Francis, The Funeral

In St. Peter’s Square.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times

 

By Jason Horowitz

I’ve covered Francis since he was selected in 2013.

April 26, 2025

 The New York Times

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VATICAN CITY — A patchwork of clergy in red, white, purple and black vestments. World leaders including President Trump seated on the stairs of St. Peter’s Basilica for an outdoor ceremony. A simple cypress casket. Haunting chants and some 200,000 faithful embraced by Bernini’s colonnade.

In a solemn and majestic funeral that ended moments ago, the Roman Catholic Church laid to rest Pope Francis, the first South American pope, whose humble style and pastoral vision both reinvigorated and divided the institution that he led for a dozen years. He was 88.

It’s warm and clear here in Rome. A group of refugees and homeless people, like those Francis advocated for around the world, joined presidents, prime ministers and the church’s cardinals — one of whom will be the next pope — to bid the Holy Father farewell.

During the funeral.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times...Catholic clergy in bright red vestments.

During the funeral.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times

“He was a Pope among the people, with an open heart towards everyone,” Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re said in the homily. “The guiding thread of his mission was also the conviction that the church is a home for all, a home with its doors always open.” 

He spoke in Italian. Texts were also read in English, Spanish, French, Arabic and Portuguese.

Before the service, priests from Myanmar talked about how Francis had energized their small church when he visited and elevated their bishop to a cardinal. Pilgrims from Ecuador said he had made them feel seen. Conservative clerics from the Czech Republic said they still weren’t sure what to make of him.

But as bells tolled a death knell, the piazza fell silent except for the sound of sea gulls. Pallbearers carried the pope’s coffin through a corridor of cardinals in their brilliant red vestments, and a choir sang a psalm.

His plain coffin was laid near the giant statue of the very first pope, Saint Peter. A slight breeze lifted the pages of an open Gospel placed on the casket. The bright sun made it hard for mourners to see the screens broadcasting the service across the vast expanse.

Thousands of people at the funeral in St. Peter’s Square.

Mourners at the open-air ceremony.Credit...James Hill for The New York Times 

During the “sign of peace,” President Trump shook hands with President Emmanuel Macron of France, as well as several other world leaders in his vicinity. Scores of priests scattered through the crowd to distribute communion.

People clapped as the pallbearers carried the coffin back into the basilica. Some held signs: “Thank you Francis.” “Goodbye Father.”

Francis requested that the traditional pomp and pageantry be pared back for his final Mass. But for a pope, simplicity is relative.

After the service, the popemobile, which carried Francis thousands of time around St. Peter’s Square and to meet the faithful around the world, drove his body to St. Mary Major, a church he loved. The Vatican said a group of “poor and needy” people would greet him at the steps before a private burial in a tomb with a frieze of a cross and the one-word inscription “Franciscus.”

As the caravan moved slowly through Rome, huge crowds formed on the sides of the road. It was strange to not see the pope waving back.