At Rome’s Marian shrine, after Francis was laid to rest
Interregnum in full swing: the day after Pope Francis’ burial in Rome’s Marian shrine
The Church buried Pope Francis in Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica on Saturday, April 26, the eve of the Octave of Easter, which Catholics the world over celebrate as Divine Mercy Sunday.
It was a fitting date for the interment of the pope, who had taken possession of his cathedra as Bishop of Rome in the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran on Divine Mercy Sunday, April 7, 2013.
Francis has also led the church in celebrating an extraordinary jubilee year of mercy from 2015 to 2016 and deployed a special group of priests around the world to bring people to an encounter with the merciful face of God.
In the hours after the late pontiff was solemnly laid to rest, the basilica saw a steady flurry of activity.
After Pope Francis was entombed, mourners stayed to pray an afternoon rosary and litany to the Blessed Virgin Mary led by a religious sister on the basilica’s portico.
Thousands more visited later to pass through the church’s holy door, and to pray at Pope Francis’ tomb.
On Saturday night — the first in the Church’s novemdiales, or nine days of mourning — Cardinal Rolandas Makrickas, coadjutor archpriest of the basilica, led another recitation of the rosary and litany at the basilica’s front piazza.
The prayers for Pope Francis’ eternal repose were offered in the presence of a replica of the venerated image of Our Lady, Salus Populi Romani.
Praying by candlelight, the congregation ended by singing the Easter hymn “Regina, Cæli,” their alleluias rising above the slight, chill wind toward a sky streaked with seagulls.
Someone shouted “Viva, Francesco,” prompting sustained applause from those at hand.
With the deceased pope resting — in the words of Lithuanian Cardinal Makrickas — “under Mary’s loving gaze,” the Church’s interregnum was well underway.
But for visitors to the basilica in the days and years to come, it is not only Pope Francis’ burial site but is a space shot through with links to his spirituality and pontificate.
On the fairly cloudy morning of Sunday, April 27, the first visitors to Pope Francis’ tomb ascended to the hilltop basilica.
Italian police and civil defense staff manned the queue that soon snaked its way all over the Piazza dell’Esquilino behind the church.
After clearing security, the pilgrims walked through the basilica’s holy door, open throughout the jubilee year of hope which the late pope had inaugurated.
Inside, a few steps beyond the door, they honored the statue depicting the Christ-child with Mary under the title Regina Pacis or Queen of Peace.
Pope Benedict XV commissioned the marble sculpture in thanksgiving for the end of World War I.
Pope Francis offered Mass in the presence of the image, for the end of the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Pope Francis’ tomb is just a few steps past the Regina Pacis image, marked as he wished, by a tombstone of marble from the land of his Ligurian ancestors, on which his name is etched in Latin.
Hanging on the wall of Francis’ niche is an enlarged copy of his pectoral cross with which many Catholics are familiar.
The cross features Christ the good shepherd, carrying a lamb on his shoulders, followed by a flock of sheep, and under a dove representing the Holy Spirit.
A white rose has been placed on the tombstone, a reminder of the deceased’s devotion to the Carmelite doctor of the Church, Saint Therese of Lisieux.
Pope Francis had released the apostolic letter C’est la confiance, to commemorate her 150th birth anniversary in 2023.
He closed that letter by praying, “Dear Saint Therese, the Church needs to radiate the brightness, the fragrance and the joy of the Gospel. Send us your roses!”
“Help us to be, like yourself, ever confident in God’s immense love for us, so that we may imitate each day your ‘little way’ of holiness. Amen.”
—
Past the late pope’s resting place, guards admitted to the Pauline chapel of the Salus Romani Populi icon — traditionally acknowledged as the work of the evangelist St. Luke — those who wanted to participate in Sunday Mass.
The chapel was packed for the Holy Eucharist at 8 a.m. which at least five priests concelebrated.
Many worshippers took photos of the icon before which Pope Francis often prayed.
He had offered a bouquet of flowers in honor of the icon of Mary and the child Jesus after he was discharged from hospital in March, stopping on the way back to the Vatican outside the basilica for the last time.
Penitents lined up at the basilica’s confessionals, where Dominican friars who form the basilica’s “apostolic college of penitentiaries” heard confessions in multiple languages.
Franciscan friar assisted the penitents, ushering them to the proper lines for confession.
Not a few pilgrims got excited when they noticed Cardinal Makrickas preparing to hear confessions.
The cardinal would later preside over second Vespers, or evening prayer for the Octave of Easter, together with the cardinals who came in the afternoon to pray at Pope Francis’ tomb.
Other pilgrims paused at the niche in front of the basilica’s main altar, which houses the Sacra Culla or Holy Crib.
This consists of five pieces of sycamore wood from Bethlehem that made up the manger on which Mary after giving birth placed the Christ-child wrapped in swaddling clothes.
Pope Francis had a special devotion to the mysteries of Christ’s Nativity. He had taken his name from St. Francis of Assisi who through a reenactment of the Nativity in 1223 created the first Christmas Creche in Greccio, around 69 miles northwest of Rome.
In 2023, when the Franciscan communities celebrated the 800th anniversary of their founder’s creation of the creche, Pope Francis granted a plenary indulgence to everyone who prayed in front of a creche in a Franciscan church.
In the first full day after Pope Francis’ interment, visitors at the basilica also prayed in front of an altar in honor of St. Jerome, bishop and doctor of the church in the basilica’s own Sistine chapel.
The mortal remains of St. Jerome and the evangelist St. Matthew, among others, are buried in the basilica.
Pope Francis recalled the 1,600th anniversary of St. Jerome’s dies natalis or heavenly birthday by publishing the apostolic letter “Scripturae Sacrae Affectus” in 2020.
In the letter, he added his own voice to those of scholars and historians who praised the saint’s enrichment of Christianity through the study of Scripture and other books.
He stressed the need for contemporary Christians to be similarly devoted to studying the faith.
“One of the problems we face today, not only in religion, is illiteracy: the hermeneutic skills that make us credible interpreters and translators of our own cultural tradition are in short supply. I would like to pose a challenge to young people in particular: begin exploring your heritage,” the pope said.
“Christianity makes you heirs of an unsurpassed cultural patrimony of which you must take ownership. Be passionate about this history which is yours. Dare to fix your gaze on the young Jerome who, like the merchant in Jesus’ parable, sold all that he had in order to buy the ‘pearl of great price’ (Matthew 13:46).”
Pope Francis was just the eighth pontiff to be buried in Santa Maria Maggiore. Those who visited his tomb had the chance to see the burials of other popes.
They are Honorius III, Nicholas IV, St. Pius V, Sixtus V, Paul V, Clement VIII, and Clement IX.
The tombs of popes Clement IX and Nicholas IV are the easiest to find but also the hardest to notice since they are located by the basilica’s busy entrances.
Only one of the popes buried there has been canonized, Pope Pius V. Like Pope Francis who was a Jesuit religious, St. Pius was a consecrated man belonging to the Dominican order.
St. Pius established what is now known as the Feast of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary in thanksgiving for Mary’s intercession for the victory of the Christian fleet against the Ottoman Empire in the naval Battle of Lepanto in 1571.
One of Pope Francis’ last acts was his approval, while he was in hospital in February, of the future canonization of Blessed Bartolo Longo, a lay Dominican who brought the image of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary to Pompei, around 150 miles southeast of Rome.
Pope Francis wrote a message for the 150th anniversary of the image’s arrival there, which is celebrated this year.
“The Rosary, a simple instrument within everyone's reach, can support the renewed evangelization to which the Church is called today,” Pope Francis said in his last message dated on the memorial of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary.
“We are aware of how it is necessary to rediscover the beauty of the Rosary in families and in homes. This prayer is of aid in building peace, and it is important to propose it to the young so that they do not hear it as repetitive and monotonous, but as an act of love that never tires of being poured out.”
“The Rosary is also a source of consolation to the sick and the suffering, ‘sweet chain that binds us to God’, but also a chain of love that becomes an embrace for the least and the marginalized, as were, in Bartolo Longo's eyes, especially orphans and the children of prisoners.”
I find the image of the plain tomb of Franciscus incredibly moving. Thanks for that photo.
This is a beautiful exposition, in words and in pictures, of Santa Maria Maggiore; and I am especially excited that this article drew to my attention two works of Pope Francis' ("C'est la confiance" and "Scripturae sacrae affectus") with which I was heretofore unfamiliar. Many thanks!