Vatican City.- With a peal of bells, thousands of faithful, political leaders and Pope Francis himself said their last goodbye on Thursday to Benedict XVI, the German theologian who made history by retiring from office, in an unusual requiem mass for a dead pontiff presided over by his substitute.
The crowd cheered as the bearers carried Benedict’s cypress coffin on their shoulders from the mist-shrouded St. Peter’s Basilica and placed it before the altar set up in the vast piazza outside.
Francis, decked out in the crimson vestments of papal funerals, began the mass with a prayer and closed it an hour later with a solemn blessing of the simple coffin, decorated only with the emeritus pope’s coat of arms. Later, he was buried in the Vatican grottoes.
Heads of state and royalty, clergy from around the world and thousands of faithful flocked to the Vatican despite calls by the emeritus pope for a simple farewell and efforts by the Holy See to make the first funeral of a para emeritus in modern times was discreet.
Many came from former Cardinal Joshep Ratzinger’s native Bavaria and wore traditional costumes including woolen coats to protect them from the morning chill.
“We have come to pay tribute to Benedict and we wanted to be here today to say goodbye,” said Raymond Mainar, who traveled from a small town east of Munich for the funeral.
“He was a very good Pope.”
The emeritus pope, who passed away on December 31 at the age of 95, is considered one of the great theologians of the 20th century and dedicated his life to defending the doctrine of the Church. But he will go down in history for a singular and revolutionary announcement that changed the future of the papacy: he became the first pope to retire in six centuries.
Ignoring calls for decorum at the end, some in the crowd held up banners or chanted “Santo Subito!” (“Holiness now!”), in a repeat of the spontaneous chants during the funeral for Saint John Paul II in 2005.
The Vatican said that some 50,000 people attended Thursday’s mass, and that around 200,000 passed through the Basilica during the three days that it housed the funeral chapel.
Only Italy and Germany were invited to send official delegations, but other leaders accepted the Vatican’s offer and came in a “private capacity.”
Among them were several other heads of state, at least four prime ministers and two delegations from royal houses. In addition, several Orthodox patriarchs joined the 125 cardinals seated at the altar, and the Russian Orthodox Church sent its head of foreign affairs.
Francis made no specific mention of his predecessor’s legacy in his homily, uttering his name only once, in the last sentence, using instead a reflection on Jesus’ willingness to surrender to God’s will.
“We too, clinging to the last words of the Lord and to the testimony that marked his life, want, as an ecclesial community, to follow in his footsteps and entrust our brother in the hands of the Father,” Francis said.
After the mass, Benedict XVI’s cypress coffin was placed inside a zinc coffin, which in turn was placed inside a third oak coffin before being buried in the crypt below St. Peter’s Basilica, where in its day was the tomb of Saint John Paul II before being moved to the upper floor.
Although the funeral was unusual, it has precedent: In 1802, Pope Pius VII held a funeral in St. Peter’s for his predecessor, Pius VI, who had died in exile in France in 1799 as a prisoner of Napoleon.
