Agency Report
The funeral of Pope Francis is scheduled for 10 a.m. local time (4 a.m. eastern) on Saturday in front of St. Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican announced Tuesday, following agreement by the College of Cardinals at the Catholic Church’s city-state headquarters in the heart of Rome.
The coffin carrying the pope, who died Monday morning after suffering a stroke and heart failure at the age of 88, was brought in a procession on Wednesday morning to the basilica from his residence at Casa Santa Marta, where he died.
The late pontiff will lie in state inside St. Peter’s Basilica for three days ahead of his funeral, with the faithful processing slowly up to his simple wooden coffin to pay their respects.
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A steady stream of cardinals, the most senior prelates in the Catholic Church, filed up first to Francis’ coffin on Wednesday.
Thousands of mourners from every walk of life followed, many waiting four hours or longer to see the pope’s body.
On Tuesday, the Vatican released the first photos and video of Francis since his death, showing him in his coffin wearing a red robe with the papal mitre on his head and a rosary intertwined in his hands.
The images showed cardinals and other church officials performing what the Vatican said was the formal Confirmation of the Pope’s Death and praying over his body.
The interim administrator of the Vatican, Irish-American Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who will play a major role in the funeral and subsequent events in the coming weeks, presided over the Wednesday morning procession to St. Peter’s and the ritual transfer of the pope’s body to the basilica.
The funeral Mass will be celebrated on Saturday morning by the dean of the College of Cardinals, Giovanni Battista Re. The papal funeral is broken down into three separate phases, or “stations.” They are the preparation of the body, the viewing of the body, and then the burial.
Attendees of Pope Francis’ funeral
The funeral at St. Peter’s Basilica on Saturday will draw “Patriarchs, Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, and priests from across the globe,” the Vatican said. It will also be attended by a number of world leaders and other dignitaries.
President Trump said Monday that he and first lady Melania would attend, as did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and France’s Emmanuel Macron. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was to attend, along with a number of other European heads of state, including U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Germany’s outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain were also planning to be at the funeral, the French news agency AFP said Tuesday, citing the royal palace in Madrid.
Kensington Palace said Tuesday that William, the Prince of Wales and heir to the British throne, would attend the pope’s funeral on behalf of the U.K. royals, representing his father King Charles III. Charles, along with Queen Camilla, met with Francis at the Vatican less than two weeks before the pontiff died.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who is currently the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant over war crimes allegedly committed during his country’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, will not attend the pope’s funeral, the Kremlin’s chief spokesman said Tuesday.
“No. The president has no such plans,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about Francis’ funeral. The ICC warrant severely limits Putin’s ability to travel internationally, as any nation that’s a signatory to the U.N. court’s founding charter is legally obligated to arrest him if he enters its territory.
The Reuters news agency said Brazil’s President Luis Inacio da Silva and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had also confirmed that they would attend the funeral. President Javier Milei of Argentina, where Francis was born in 1936, would also be at the funeral, according to his office.
China’s government indicated Tuesday that no decisions had been made regarding which officials might attend the service at the Vatican.
Event after Pope Francis’ funeral
After the funeral Mass at St. Peter’s, Pope Francis’ coffin will be taken to the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome, where he will be entombed.
The pope chose to be buried at the smaller basilica, which is about four miles away, outside the Vatican walls. He prayed at St. Mary’s often, before and after international trips during his 12-year pontificate.
Between 15 and 20 days after the pope’s death, the Cardinal Electors will gather at the Vatican and seal themselves off from the world behind the doors of the Sistine Chapel for the papal conclave, the centuries-old process of choosing the next pope. Only cardinals under the age of 80 — currently a group of about 135 — are eligible to vote in a conclave.
The meeting of the cardinals on Tuesday was the first in what will be a series of gatherings culminating with the conclave. John Allen, editor of the Catholic news website “Crux,” told CBS News that the cardinals who were already at the Vatican to attend Tuesday’s meeting would soon be joined by others from around the world.
For the actual conclave, the cardinals will cast ballots inside the Sistine Chapel, out of public view, for their choice to lead the church, repeating the process until a candidate emerges with a two-thirds-plus-one majority.
The paper ballots are burned after each round of voting, sending up black smoke to signal no choice has been reached yet, and finally white smoke to reveal that a new pope has been selected.
