Poor and powerful pray for repose of pope

Pope Francis waves to the faithful from the popemobile. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

By Cindy Wooden

Catholic News Service (CNS)

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Francis was “a pope among the people, with an open heart toward everyone,” said Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, dean of the College of Cardinals, as he presided over the funeral of the Pope, who died April 21 at the age of 88.

And the people - an estimated 250,000 of them - were present as 14 pallbearers carried Pope Francis’ casket into St. Peter’s Square and set it on a carpet in front of the altar for the funeral Mass on April 26, five days after he died.

His burial was scheduled on the same day, in Rome’s Basilica of St. Mary Major. His body was driven in a motorcade through the city center where he served as bishop from the day of his election to the papacy on March 13, 2013.

Security around the Vatican was tight, not only because of the number of mourners expected but especially because of the presence of kings, queens, presidents - including U.S. President Donald J. Trump - and prime ministers from 80 countries and official representatives from scores of other nations.

Also present were the residents of a Vatican palace Pope Francis had turned into a shelter for the homeless, and the 12 Syrian refugees he brought to Rome with him from a refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos in 2016.

The Gospel reading at the funeral was John 21:15-19, where the risen Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?” When Peter says “Yes,” Jesus tells him, “Feed my sheep.”

“Despite his frailty and suffering toward the end, Pope Francis chose to follow this path of self-giving until the last day of his earthly life,” Cardinal Re said in his homily. “He followed in the footsteps of his Lord, the Good Shepherd, who loved His sheep to the point of giving His life for them.”

Fourteen pallbearers carried Pope Francis' coffin out of St. Peter's Basilica into St. Peter's Square following his funeral on Saturday, April 26, 2025. (Photo/Vatican Media)

The 91-year-old cardinal told the crowd that the image of Pope Francis that “will remain etched in our memory” was his appearance on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica the day before he died to give his Easter “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) address, which included a blessing, and then to ride in the “popemobile” among the people who had come to celebrate Christ’s victory over death.

Within the church, the cardinal said, “the guiding thread” of Pope Francis’ ministry was his “conviction that the church is a home for all, a home with its doors always open.”

For Pope Francis, he said, the church was a “field hospital,” one “capable of bending down to every person, regardless of their beliefs or condition, and healing their wounds.”

Cardinal Re said that “faced with the raging wars of recent years, with their inhuman horrors and countless deaths and destruction, Pope Francis incessantly raised his voice imploring peace and calling for reason and honest negotiation to find possible solutions.”

‘”Build bridges, not walls’ was an exhortation he repeated many times, and his service of faith as successor of the Apostle Peter always was linked to the service of humanity in all its dimensions,” the cardinal said.

At the end of the Mass, Cardinal Baldassare Reina, papal vicar of Rome, offered special prayers for the city’s deceased bishop, Pope Francis. Then, Eastern Catholic patriarchs and major archbishops gathered around the casket and led funeral prayers from the Byzantine tradition in honor of the pastor of the universal Catholic Church.

Sister Norma Pimentel, a Missionary of Jesus and director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, had knelt in prayer before the body of Pope Francis on April 25 and was present for the funeral.

Pope Francis' coffin was transported from St. Peter's the Basilica of St. Mary Major, his final resting place. (Photo/Vatican Media)

“The funeral of Pope Francis is a very important part of who we are as people of faith,” she told Catholic News Service. “We walk together, we cry together, we work together ... doing what we believe is important in our lives as people of faith, and we say farewell together at the end.”

The funeral, she said, is a time “to join him in this last farewell and say thank you: Thank you for being you, for being there with us, and we’ll see you.”