The Vatican will finalize preparations on Friday for Pope Francis’ funeral, as the last of the large crowds of mourners file through St. Peter’s Basilica to view his open coffin.
Many of the 50 heads of state and 10 monarchs attending Saturday’s ceremony in St. Peter’s Square, including US President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, are expected to arrive in Rome on Friday.
Italian and Vatican authorities have implemented tight security measures around St. Peter’s ahead of the funeral, with drones blocked, snipers positioned on rooftops, and fighter jets on standby.
Additional checkpoints will be activated Friday night, according to police.
Tens of thousands of people have already waited in long queues to pay their respects to Francis, whose coffin will be closed at 8:00 pm in a ceremony attended by senior cardinals.
Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the camerlengo who is managing the Vatican’s day-to-day affairs until a new pope is elected, will preside over the “Rite of the Sealing of the Coffin.”
The Catholic Church’s first Latin American pope passed away on Monday at the age of 88, less than a month after being hospitalized for several weeks with severe pneumonia.
Veronique Montes-Coulomb, a tourist from Toulouse, France, who attended the lying-in-state at St. Peter’s on Thursday, recalled attending Easter Sunday mass, the pontiff’s last public appearance.
“We saw the pope passing by in the ‘popemobile’; he seemed relatively healthy, and we were surprised to learn that he had died on Monday morning,” she told AFP.
The Argentine pontiff, who had long struggled with declining health, defied doctors’ orders by appearing at Easter, the most significant event in the Catholic calendar.
Condolences have poured in from around the world for the Jesuit pope, a passionate reformer who championed the marginalized during his 12-year tenure as leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.
In his final speech, he criticized those who incite “contempt…towards the vulnerable, the marginalized, and migrants.”
At least 130 foreign delegations are expected to attend his funeral, and a no-fly zone will be enforced.
‘Brief but intense’
The pope’s coffin was placed before St. Peter’s altar for his three-day lying-in-state, with Francis dressed in his papal vestments – a red chasuble, white mitre, and black shoes.
“It was a brief but intense moment next to his body,” said 63-year-old Italian Massimo Palo to AFP after his visit.
“He was a pope amongst his flock, amongst his people, and I hope the next papacies will be a bit like his,” he added.
Italy’s civil protection agency estimates that “several hundred thousand” people will descend on Rome during what was already expected to be a busy weekend due to a public holiday on Friday.
After the funeral, Francis’s coffin will be transported at a walking pace to his preferred church, the Papal Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, for burial.
The Vatican has stated that a group of “poor and needy” individuals, whom the pontiff championed, will be present to welcome the coffin.
He will be interred in the ground, with his simple tomb marked with the single word: Franciscus.
The tomb will be open to the public from Sunday morning.
Following the burial, attention will shift to the process of selecting Francis’s successor.
Cardinals from around the world have been returning to Rome for the funeral and the conclave, where a new pontiff will be elected.
In the absence of a pope, the cardinals have been meeting daily to discuss the next steps, with another meeting scheduled for Friday at 9:00 am.
They have yet to announce a date for the conclave, which must begin no sooner than 15 days and no later than 20 days after a pope’s death.
Only cardinals under the age of 80 – currently around 135 – are eligible to vote.
Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who served as Francis’s second-in-command, is considered the frontrunner according to British bookmaker William Hill.
He is followed by Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, the Metropolitan Archbishop emeritus of Manila, Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson, and Archbishop of Bologna Matteo Zuppi.
