Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has been laid to rest in the crypt under St Peter’s Basilica following his funeral which was presided over by his successor, Pope Francis.
The crowd gathered in St Peter’s Square applauded as pallbearers carried Benedict’s cypress-wood coffin out of the fog-shrouded basilica and rested it before the altar in the vast square for the Requiem Mass.
Pope Francis, wearing the crimson vestments typical of papal funerals, opened the service with a prayer and closed it an hour later by blessing the simple casket, which was decorated only with the former pope’s coat of arms.
Heads of state and European royalty had travelled to Rome for the solemn ceremony that differed only slightly from the liturgy that salutes the passing of a reigning pontiff.
The only official delegations, however, were from Germany, where Joseph Ratzinger was born, and Italy, where he spent much of his professional life. The guests included Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, and Italy’s President Mattarella and prime minister Giorgia Meloni.
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Among the heads of state attending in a private capacity were President Novak of Hungary, President Duda of Poland, King Philip of Belgium and Queen Sofia of Spain. One of Asia’s highest-ranking Catholic clerics, Cardinal Joseph Zen, was also allowed by the Chinese authorities to attend the funeral. The 90-year-old cardinal was arrested in May last year for breaking China’s national security law in the wake of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
Ignoring exhortations for decorum at the end, some in the crowd held banners or shouted “Santo subito” — “Sainthood now” — echoing the spontaneous chants that erupted during Pope John Paul II’s funeral in April 2005.
Benedict died aged 95 on Saturday morning at his home in a monastery in the Vatican gardens, where he had spent the past decade in quiet prayer and contemplation after becoming the first pope in six centuries to resign.
Archbishop Georg Gänswein, his private secretary for almost 20 years, said that his last audible words, spoken to a nurse in Italian, were: “Lord, I love you.”
The Requiem Mass in St Peter’s Square was celebrated by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the dean of the college of cardinals, while Francis, 86, who is suffering with knee problems, presided from a chair and gave the homily.
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More than 120 cardinals and 400 bishops, dressed in red liturgical robes, participated in the Mass, while about 4,000 priests, wearing white surplices and red stoles around their shoulders, were at the front of the congregation in St Peter’s Square.
In his homily Pope Francis praised the dedication to the church of his predecessor. “O God, who in the plan of your providence called your servant Benedict to guide the church, allow him to participate in Heaven in the eternal glory of your son, whom he served as his vicar on Earth,” he said.
“Holding fast to the Lord’s last words and to the witness of his entire life, we, too, as an ecclesial community, want to follow in his steps and to commend our brother into the hands of the Father.”
About 200,000 people had filed past Benedict’s body during the three days he lay in state in St Peter’s Basilica.
Thousands began arriving in the dark of the night to attend the funeral of the former pope, a hero to Roman Catholic conservatives. Some arrived in the Vatican area as early as 4am, five and half hours before the ceremony was due to begin.
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As a thick fog shrouded the Italian capital, they started going through security checks before dawn to begin taking their seats.
More than 1,000 Italian security personnel were called up, and airspace around the tiny Holy See has been closed for the day. Italy ordered that flags around the country be flown at half mast.
Among those attending were Germans in traditional Bavarian outfits carrying flags and standards of the area of Germany where Benedict was born. His body was placed into his plain coffin ready for the funeral. After the funeral it was taken back inside the basilica to be encased in zinc before being sealed in a second wooden casket.
A short summary of his life and papacy, along with other items, including Vatican coins minted during his reign, were also tucked into the coffin. The document, written in Latin, says he “fought with firmness” against sexual abuse by clergy in the church.
While many leading figures have praised Benedict since his death, criticism has also been voiced, including by victims of sexual abuse, who have accused him of seeking to protect the Roman Catholic Church at all costs.
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Benedict had requested a sober and simple ceremony but the lying in state and funeral were nonetheless a major media and religious event. It is understood that more than 600 journalists from around the world were in attendance.
The Gospel passage was Luke’s story of the “good thief”, crucified next to Jesus and assured by him that they would meet again in Heaven.
Benedict outlined his own thoughts on death in a letter to the archdiocese of Munich that was published in February last year in response to criticism of his handling of sex abuse cases when he was in charge there.
“Even though, as I look back on my long life, I can have great reason for fear and trembling, I am nonetheless of good cheer, for I trust firmly that the Lord is not only the just judge, but also the friend and brother who himself has already suffered for my shortcomings, and is thus also my advocate,” he wrote.
His Christian faith, he said, granted him knowledge and friendship “with the judge of my life, and thus allows me to pass confidently through the dark door of death”.
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At the end of the ceremony Benedict’s body was taken to be interred in a tomb formerly occupied by Pope John Paul II, with whom he co-operated as the Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog — sometimes scornfully referred to as “God’s Rottweiler” — for almost a quarter of a century.
Buried with him will be symbols of his ecclesiastical authority collectively amounting to a kind of papal time capsule: the pallium, a white scarf woven from lambswool by nuns from a cloistered convent in Rome which is a symbol of ecclesiastical jurisdiction; commemorative coins and medals minted during his pontificate and a deed outlining its key events sealed in a metal cylinder.
Comments by Gänswein about the suffering caused to the former pope by Francis’s clampdown on the use of Latin liturgy have been widely reported in Italian media, illustrating tensions between progressives and conservatives in the Church.
Francis’s restrictions, introduced in July 2021, reversed Benedict’s policy and hit the retired pope hard, Gänswein told the German newspaper Die Tagespost in an interview published on the day of Benedict’s death. “I think he broke the heart of Pope Benedict,” he said.
Gänswein said that Benedict’s opening to conservatives who cherished the Latin liturgy was intended to grant them interior peace and lure them away from the schismatic group headed by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. “If we think of the centuries during which the old Mass was a fount of spiritual life and nutriment for so many saints, it’s impossible to imagine that it no longer has anything to offer,” he said.
Francis severely restricted use of the pre-Vatican II Latin rite Mass, seeing it as a focus for conservative opponents of his reforms, codifying the limits in a document entitled Traditionis custodes.
Pope Francis struggled to his feet to place his hand on Benedict’s cypress coffin at the end of the funeral service in St Peter’s Square, remaining for a while in silent prayer as he bid farewell to his predecessor (Philip Willan writes).
He presided over the ceremony but did not celebrate mass with others, cutting a frail figure as he was pushed in a wheelchair or sat hunched on a chair in front of the temporary altar.
The first pope in modern times to preside at the funeral of a predecessor, his declining strength was clear, raising the prospect that he may follow Benedict through the recently opened door of retirement.
Some Vatican watchers have suggested his health problems may extend beyond the painful osteoarthritis in his knee and may be starting to affect his mental performance, making it difficult for him to pull off the spontaneous, off-the-cuff interventions for which he has become known.
Francis will also be concerned that Benedict remains a beacon for conservative opponents of his own papacy. The chants of “Benedetto, Benedetto” and “Santo subito” in the crowd at the end of the mass were perhaps as much a protest against Francis as an expression of affection for the pope emeritus.
In an interview with a German newspaper, Benedict’s personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, said Francis’s reversal of his predecessor’s endorsement of the Latin mass had “broken Benedict’s heart”, indicating the strength of feeling that separates the two religious camps.
Gerard O’Connell, the Vatican correspondent of America magazine, a Jesuit publication, warned that appearances could be deceptive.
“It’s the first time in ten years that there is no emeritus pope, so it’s a new chapter in the history of the church,” he said.
O’Connell said Francis had always felt free to pursue his own agenda but had held off making personnel changes in the Vatican out of respect for Benedict. He expected Francis to replace some top officials aged over 75 who were appointed by Benedict, and to create new cardinals before the end of the year, increasing his influence over the conclave that will elect his successor.
“Many people expect him to put in his own people. Now he can have his own administration completely,” he said. “To think that because of his mobility problems this is a prelude to resignation would be a mistake. There’s no indication he is considering resignation. He’s moving fast and very determined.”
O’Connell, who is close to the reigning Jesuit pontiff, highlighted important differences between the two popes. “Benedict felt a guillotine had come down on him when he was elected and acknowledged he had little capacity for government,” he said.
Francis, in contrast, was a man of government and has been happy as pope. “He experienced a great inner peace during the conclave where he was elected and it has never left him.”
