26th April 2025, NewsOrient, News Faith
Photo Caption; Coffin of late Pope Francis being carried by pallbearers into Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica in Rome on April 26, 2025 for burial. (Photo by Piero CRUCIATTI / AFP).

Pope Francis was today, Saturday, laid to rest in Rome after a Vatican funeral for the “pope among the people” attended by hundreds of thousands of mourners and world leaders including US President Donald Trump and Nigerian delegation led by Senate President Godswill Akpabio.

AFP reports that “around 400,000 people packed St Peter’s Square and lined the streets in Rome to say goodbye to the Argentine pontiff, a champion of the poor who had led the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics since 2013.

“After a solemn funeral in front of hushed crowds, Francis’s plain wooden coffin — a testament to a life of humility — was driven slowly to Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore church, where he will be interred in a private ceremony.

Guatemalan Maria Vicente, 52, holding a rosary in her hands, cried as she watched the coffin being carried into Santa Maria Maggiore, the pope’s favourite Rome church.

“It made me very sad. It’s touching, that he left us like that,” she said.

Fourteen white-gloved pallbearers carried the coffin into the church, as children placed baskets of flowers at the altar and a choir sang prayers.

The marble tomb of the Catholic Church’s first Latin American leader is inscribed with just one word: “Franciscus”, his name in Latin.

More than 50 heads of state were present at the funeral, including Trump — who met several world leaders in a corner of the basilica beforehand, notably Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, in their first face-to-face since their Oval Office clash in February.

Francis, who died on Monday aged 88, was “a pope among the people, with an open heart”, who strove for a more compassionate, open-minded Catholic Church, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re said in his homily (AFP).

~ Published By NewsOrient Network

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