Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re spreads incense on the coffin of late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI during a funeral mass in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican, on Jan. 5.Alessandra Tarantino/The Associated Press
At the end of a solemn funeral on a cold foggy day, Pope Francis rose from his wheelchair in St. Peter’s Square and, with the help of a cane, stood before the simple wooden casket containing the body of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI.
He bowed before the casket, held aloft by 12 pallbearers wearing grey jackets and white shirts and bowties, just before it was to enter the main door of St. Peter’s Basilica. He placed his right hand on the coffin and blessed it before closing his eyes for a few moments of reflection as the crowd clapped. Some shouted “santo subito” – saint now – their call to have Benedict canonized quickly.
The simple ceremony, which began at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, saw an incumbent pope presiding over the funeral of another pope – unprecedented in modern times. It symbolized the end of the strange “two popes” era. Benedict, who died at 95 on the last day of December at his residence in the Vatican gardens, resigned in 2013, becoming the first pope not to “die on the cross” in more than 600 years.
Francis opened his eulogy with the last words of Jesus, which were spoken on the cross. “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit,” Francis said, speaking in Italian.
He closed the eulogy by saying, “Benedict, faithful friend of the Bridegroom, may your joy be complete as you hear his voice, now and forever.”
Benedict’s funeral was small compared with that of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II. His funeral on April 8, 2005, filled the streets of Rome and the Vatican with three million mourners.
Thousands attended Benedict's funeral in St. Peter's Square.REMO CASILLI/Reuters
Some media reports said Benedict’s funeral mass attracted about 100,000 people, though a Vatican spokesman put the figure at about half that. St. Peter’s Square was certainly not full, and only the heads of state and government of Italy and Germany, where Benedict was born, attended the mass. Some government leaders, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Polish counterpart, Mateusz Morawiecki, paid their respects to Benedict privately in the days before the funeral.
Benedict held highly traditional views of Catholicism and many in the crowd admired him for his conservative stance. He strongly opposed the ordination of women and fortified the Vatican’s views that contraception should not be allowed. He also pushed for the return of the old Latin mass, which attracted orthodox churchgoers, if not many devout young Catholics.
T. Ripley Parker, 26, a visual effects specialist from Vancouver, was on holiday in Rome when Benedict died and extended her stay in the city so she could attend the funeral. She said she converted from Episcopalian to Catholicism because she liked Benedict’s rejection of modernism.
“I felt the Latin mass was more relevant to me, because I like a serious, traditional service,” she said. “I realize that Benedict and Francis are very different, but they learned from each other and were not divisive with each other, which was good for the church.”
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re blesses Benedict's coffin in The Holy Grotto of the Vatican.VATICAN MEDIA/Reuters
Eva Benedicta Sherpa, from Erfurt, Germany, said she had met Benedict several times and respected him for stepping down, though his resignation saddened her. “I cried when he resigned,” she said. “He was like a father to me. But I know he did not have enough energy, enough power, to carry on. If he had not resigned, I think he would have died a few months later.”
The resignation of Benedict, whose birth name was Joseph Ratzinger, remains a mystery. He said he no longer had the “strength of mind and body” to carry on, though he lived for almost a full decade after he left the papacy.
Benedict’s death has Vatican watchers wondering whether Francis will also resign – and, if so, when. The 86-year-old Argentine-born pontiff has openly mused several times about stepping down. Last July, when he was returning to Rome after his Canadian tour, he told reporters on his flight that the “door is open” to his retirement.
Sandro Magister, an Italian journalist who has written two books on ecclesiastical affairs, recently told Euronews that he thinks Francis’s resignation is possible but not imminent even though he has difficulty walking and had colon surgery in 2021.
“In reality if you observe him, he leads a very sustained, frenetic, breathless rhythm of life, regardless of the knee ailments,” he said. “His fast-paced life is not the life of someone who is about to resign.”
Benedict was buried in the Vatican’s grottoes beneath St. Peter’s Basilica.