Pope Francis understood optics. When his physique was moved from the Vatican guesthouse the place he lived and died to the Basilica of St. Peter’s on Wednesday, his imaginative and prescient of a less complicated papacy had one in every of its most tangible visible moments.
It was not like when Pope John Paul II died in 2005, and the procession that accompanied his physique to the basilica started within the opulently embellished Sala Clementina. That procession was chronicled on live TV, and as with earlier popes, it moved down majestic marble staircases, and thru the vaulted loggias and frescoed halls of the Apostolic Palace, reflecting centuries’ price of papal energy and wealth.
Pope Francis’ procession was also televised, however in his case it started with cardinals praying silently for 10 minutes. His physique, nestled in an open coffin, was introduced from the guesthouse — Francis had declined to reside within the extravagant palace — to the basilica, a brief stroll below a brilliant blue sky, nature’s palette. Inside St. Peter’s, the coffin was positioned low to the bottom, not on a raised bier, for the throngs of individuals submitting previous to pay their final respects.
However a papal funeral is a papal funeral, and people current for the funeral Mass on Saturday, together with tens of millions watching on-line or on TV world wide, will nonetheless observe a solemn second involving luxurious Catholic pageantry.
For one factor, the church has extra cardinals than ever earlier than, so the procession of cardinals accompanying the coffin will inevitably be longer. When John Paul died, 157 cardinals participated within the ceremony. There are at present 252 cardinals, although not all are anticipated to attend due to sickness or age.
Final 12 months, Francis, who died Monday at 88, simplified the church’s elaborate papal funeral rites, constructed on centuries of custom. The variations might not be evident to many observers, however they’re meant “to emphasise much more that the funeral of the Roman Pontiff is that of a pastor and disciple of Christ and never of a strong individual of this world,” stated Archbishop Diego Ravelli, Grasp of Apostolic Ceremonies, when the book laying out the principles was printed.
The extra pastoral focus was according to Francis’ disdain for “clericalism” — the tendency of many church leaders to place themselves above their flocks — and its trappings, about which he repeatedly admonished clerics during year-end addresses to the curia.
Some consultants say that liturgically, the brand new guidelines don’t veer removed from the earlier rites, with tweaks right here or there. The foremost distinction, they are saying, is that by insisting on being seen in a coffin, Francis was downplaying the paranormal and conventional components of the papacy, which embody the general public show of the pope’s physique forward of the funeral.
One other important change, which isn’t within the rule e book however was introduced by the workplace of liturgical celebrations, is that clerics current on the funeral — from cardinals to bishops to monks — can rejoice the funeral Mass collectively. Beforehand, solely cardinals and patriarchs might rejoice a papal funeral; opening it to all clergy is consistent with Francis’ effort to create a humbler, less top-down picture of the church.
Many of the funeral will likely be celebrated in Latin, and there will likely be incense and hymns and Gregorian chants. Attended by dozens of heads of state, monarchs and different dignitaries, it is going to be, in any case, a spectacle.
And on the heart of all of it will likely be Francis’ easy coffin, on the esplanade of St. Peter’s Basilica. He will likely be buried in a single picket coffin, relatively than three nested ones as his two predecessors had been, although they, too, lay in easy coffins at their funerals.
After the funeral, Francis’ physique will likely be taken the Papal Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, the place he chose to be buried in a plain tomb, within the aisle subsequent to the lavish Seventeenth-century chapel containing a famed historic icon of the Virgin Mary and the newborn Jesus, often known as the Salus Populi Romani. Francis was significantly dedicated to the icon and prayed there usually.
Like St. Peter’s, Santa Maria Maggiore is an opulent concoction of centuries’ price of frescoes, mosaics and sculptures beneath a coffered ceiling that’s trimmed in gold.
In his will Francis requested to be buried “within the earth,” in an undecorated tomb with solely the inscription “Franciscus.”
Writing within the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera this week, the journalist and creator Aldo Cazzullo famous that in Canto 11 of his “Paradise,” Dante wrote of the demise of St. Francis, whom he deeply commemorated, saying that the saint of the poor had wished to be buried within the earth.
Pope Francis, the primary pontiff to take the title of the beloved saint, requested to be buried like him, Mr. Cazzullo wrote. “Even in demise,” he wrote, Francis “distanced himself from the curia, from a sure concept of the papacy.”
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