Tens of thousands of people filed into St Peter’s Basilica to pay final respects to Pope Francis on his last day of lying in state before his funeral. The basilica was open for most of Thursday evening into Friday morning, shutting its doors for only three hours overnight.
Long queues snaked around St Peter’s Square and the surrounding roads, before being funneled through the heart of the basilica in a single column leading to the central altar, where Francis’s open coffin was displayed on a dais on Friday. People were pressing forward slowly, some waiting hours, in order to have a few minutes inside to pay their respects to Francis.
The body of the 88-year-old pope, who died on Monday, April 21, 2025, in his rooms at the Vatican’s Santa Marta guesthouse after suffering a stroke, was brought to St Peter’s in a solemn procession on Wednesday, April 23, 2025. Since then, about 250,000 people from all over the world have bid farewell to the pontiff, according to the Vatican.
“It’s a very strong feeling (to be here),” Patricio Castriota, a visitor who, like the pope, is from Argentina, told the Reuters news agency. “This farewell was very sad, but I thank God that I was able to see him. He’s the only pope we’ve had who came from South America, a pope who had many good intentions for the Catholic Church,” said Castriota. “He cleaned up (a lot) of the bad, maybe not all of it, but he tried.”
Francis, who became pope in 2013, was the first pontiff from the Western Hemisphere and was known for a charming, and even humorous, demeanor. His 12-year papacy was sometimes turbulent, with Francis seeking to overhaul a divided institution but battling with traditionalists who opposed his many changes.
“He humanized the church, without desacralizing it,” said Cardinal Francois-Xavier Bustillo, who leads the Church on the French island of Corsica.
Hundreds of disappointed people were turned away when authorities closed St Peter’s Square hours before the viewing period ended. Public viewings ended at 7 PM (17:00 GMT) on Friday, April 25, 2025, before a formal rite to seal the late pope’s coffin.
Reporting from the Vatican, Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel-Hamid said the cardinals were due to assist with the closure of the coffin in a private ceremony. “Inside the coffin they will put twelve coins, each representing a year of Pope Francis’s papacy. There will also be a kind of metal tube with a paper inside, describing his papacy and legacy,” she said.
The Vatican said at least 130 foreign delegations had confirmed their attendance at Pope Francis’s funeral on Saturday, April 26, 2025, including about 50 heads of state and 10 reigning monarchs. Among the foreign leaders, United States President Donald Trump is heading to Rome for the funeral, an unexpected first foreign trip of his second term in which he will face leaders including Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
French President Emmanuel Macron, one leader who has managed to forge a bond with Trump, and outgoing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will both be at the funeral, as will top European Union executives Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa. Also in attendance will be Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a veteran leftist whose defeated rival Jair Bolsonaro was an ideological soulmate of Trump.
Pope Francis also made significant changes to the papal funeral rites in advance of his own death. The revisions he made to the Ordo Exsequiarum Romani Pontificis last year are significant, but relatively subtle, representing simple updates to a text last changed in 1998.
The third typical edition of the Roman Missal was published in 2002 and reissued with further minor changes in 2008. The previous edition of the funeral rites conformed to the 1975 missal. The funeral of Pope Benedict XVI in 2023 already had to adapt the papal Ordo in view of his status as Pope Emeritus at the time of his death, but it also had to be accommodated to the current, 2008 edition of the Roman Missal.
The 2024 Ordo incorporates these changes into the liturgical book itself. It also updates the Latin texts to use the Nova Vulgata, which since 2001 has been the standard Latin text for scripture in the Roman Rite, and also revisions to the Litany of the Saints, so as to include additions to the General Roman Calendar made since 1998.
Second, the changes made by Pope Francis to the constitution of the Roman Curia, in his 2022 apostolic constitution Praedicate Evangelium, required some modest emendation of the papal funeral rites.
In addition to the funeral preparations, the Cardinals held the third General Congregation on Thursday, April 24, 2025. 113 Cardinals were present for the Congregation in the New Synod Hall, which began at 9 AM and concluded at 12 PM, including a half-hour break.
Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández will celebrate the Mass on the sixth day of the Novemdiales, instead of Cardinal Kevin Farrell. Fr. Donato Ogliari, O.S.B., Abbot of St. Paul Outside the Walls, will deliver the first meditation on Monday, April 28, 2025. Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, Preacher Emeritus of the Papal Household, will deliver the second meditation at the beginning of the conclave, whose starting date has not yet been decided.
As of 1 PM on Thursday, April 24, 2025, 61,000 people had paid their respects to the late Pope Francis. St. Peter’s Basilica should close on Thursday at midnight, unless large crowds are still queuing to enter.
Following Pope Francis’s funeral Mass on Saturday, April 26, 2025, several recipients of the Church’s charitable activities will stand on the steps of the Basilica of St. Mary Major to welcome his coffin and pay their respects. According to a statement from the Holy See, the initiative recalls that “The poor have a privileged place in the heart of God” and seeks to recall the magisterium of the late Pope, who chose the name Francis “so as to never forget [the poor].”
On Saturday, April 26, 2025, a Rosary will be held in front of the Basilica of St. Mary Major at 9 PM, and the burial service for Pope Francis will take place in private. Starting the morning of Sunday, April 27, 2025, the faithful may begin to visit the tomb of Pope Francis at the Marian Basilica.
