‘Grazie, Francesco’: Notes from the pope’s resting place
Before Pope Francis was laid to rest, mourners gathered at Piazza di Santa Maria Maggiore
After hundreds of thousands gathered to mourn him Saturday, Pope Francis’ remains were conveyed into his final resting place at the Roman basilica where the pope most loved to pray, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and her help of the Roman people.
On the day of the late pope’s funeral, thousands chose to bid him farewell from along the thoroughfares connecting Rome’s Vatican and Esquiline hills, with most concentrated in piazza fronting the Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica, where the late pontiff would pray before and after apostolic trips, and where he chose to be buried.
The pope’s trademark vehicle served as a reminder of the late pope’s personality — outgoing, charismatic, and until he was worn down by age and disease, cheerful.
Bells tolled, the chanting of a choir — aired live from Saint Peter’s Square — echoed up and down the Pizza de Santa Maria Maggiore, and the faithful spontaneously applauded to usher the Holy Father into his burial place.
Many, especially young pilgrims who came to Rome for the now-delayed canonization of Bl. Carlos Acutis, shouted “Papa Francesco” followed by a rhythmic clapping of hands as the popemobile bearing his coffin wheeled into view.
The crowd was up to 30 deep on some stretches of sidewalk on three sides of the piazza. The crowd grew quiet as the coffin was removed from the popemobile and raised on the shoulders.
Many mourners had tears in their eyes as they glimpsed the last of St. Peter’s 265th successor some distance from where they stood, past a forest of heads, hands raised with mobile cameras, and media cameras behind them.
They did not seem to mind staying for hours beneath the blazing sun outside Santa Maria Maggiore or along the route, and eventually standing shoulder-to-shoulder with one another as people poured onto the square, when the inevitable final moments of the funeral procession approached.
When the sun was at its peak, mourners gamely helped the Italian police distribute free bottles of water to everyone who was thirsty.
To the energy and endurance of the young, there was a solemnity that rose to the occasion, similar to the silence of a lone pigeon circling above, or the quiet signs of mourning on the buildings bordering the piazza outside the pope’s final resting place.
There was red velvet drapery on the basilica’s façade, a banner that read “Grazie, Francesco” on another building, the Vatican, Italian, and European Union flags at half mast on others, the flag with a black ribbon on the edifice across from the basilica.
Giorgio Rizzo and Giulia Bonome, both Italian young people, had mixed feelings coming to Rome from Bergamo, a city close to Milan, for the Jubilee of Teenagers slated from April 25 to 27, they told The Pillar.
“I’m happy because I am in Rome. But I am sad because the pope is dead, and we have come to say goodbye,” Giorgio, 14, said while waiting for the Mass of Christian Burial for Pope Francis.
“But I’m very happy that we can now see him one more time.”
Giorgio had been looking forward to the jubilee scheduled for this weekend, which was supposed to be his second time to see the pope.
Giorgio said he had been too young to remember clearly his first time to see Francis. His mother and father had brought him with them on a pilgrimage to the Vatican when he was only three years old.
He said he found Pope Francis to be a friendly pope and added that he hopes the next pope “will change the Church because it has so many negative stereotypes” — though he did not specify what he had in mind.
Giulia, 18, said that despite the pope’s death, the jubilee remained for her a moment of pilgrimage, and of praying together with her fellow young people from Bergamo.
“It is very sad for us,” she said.
Like a lot of pilgrims, Giulia mentioned her view that Pope Francis had been a significant figure for the Church.
“We are happy to stay here and commemorate together this amazing figure for the Church, not only for Catholics but for all people in the world.”
Pope Francis, she said, was “a great loss” for her generation because he was the pope of their adolescence.
To her view, Giulia said the greatest lesson the late pontiff taught young people was a kind of gratitude for the securities in their lives.
“To be grateful for what we have — poor people do not have what we can have.”
She added that Pope Francis also reminded young people to “pray for everyone, to spread positivity and love to all.”
Jeronima Alves, a Portuguese doctor who works in a London hospital came to Rome just for Pope Francis’ funeral.
“He was a very special pope who really touched the hearts of people and so I felt compelled to come here to pay my respects, in spite of my busy schedule with my patients,” she told The Pillar, adding that she was returning to London immediately after the funeral.
The doctor said she admired the pope’s welcoming stance to everyone from the poor to people who identify as gay — Alves said that she believed Francis’ perspective mirrored that of Christ.
“I feel that [Pope Francis’] message is that the Church is for everybody,” she said, “and the fact that he welcomed everybody—I felt amazed by that, I fully supported it.”
Looking back on the release of the independent audit on clerical sexual abuse in the Church in Portugal on the eve of Pope Francis’ visit there for World Youth Day in 2023, she acknowledged repeatedly that abuse is “a difficult issue.”
But the Church, in her view, is more transparent than other institutions where abuse has been happening but going underreported, Alves said.
As to the future?
“I would like someone with the same profile as Pope Francis,” Alves said.
Sister Julita Sihaloho, who comes from Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, waited with three of her religious sisters for the pope’s funeral cortege.
Sister Julita told The Pillar that for her, Pope Francis was truly “a spiritual father,” someone with whom she could identify because as a Jesuit, he also took the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
“He was really human like us. We did not feel any gap. We did not feel any distance. Normally, members feel distant from their leaders,” she said.
“His way of life was simple. Simplicity is not a new teaching but he showed us once again that it is possible to live simply in this modern world.”
Indonesian Christians’ expectation that Francis’ visit to their country last September would have a strong ripple effect, Sister Julita said, seemed to confirmed when around one million Indonesians were baptized during the Easter Triduum this year.
“We always have newly baptized Christians every year but we foresaw that with [Pope Francis’] visit, there would be more who would convert because he lived his faith,” said the sister who is in her seventh year of perpetual profession.
“For us, Christians in Indonesia, in the midst of persecution, directly or indirectly, we saw that he lived the faith. He did not just teach it. By the example of his life, people were converted.”
One _million_ Indonesian neophytes! Glory to God!
The 1 million number of Indonesians being baptised during the Easter Triduum blew me away. Is this correct? As of September 2024, there were 8.6 million Catholics in Indonesia.