Pope Francis understood optics. When his body was moved from the Vatican guesthouse where he lived and died to the Basilica of St. Peter’s on Wednesday, his vision of a simpler papacy had one of its most tangible visual moments.
It was unlike when Pope John Paul II died in 2005, and the procession that accompanied his body to the basilica began in the opulently decorated Sala Clementina. That procession was chronicled on live TV, and as with previous popes, it moved down majestic marble staircases, and through the vaulted loggias and frescoed halls of the Apostolic Palace, reflecting centuries’ worth of papal power and wealth.
Pope Francis’ procession was also televised, but in his case it began with cardinals praying silently for a good 10 minutes. His body, nestled in an open coffin, was brought from the guesthouse — Francis had declined to live in the extravagant palace — to the basilica, a short walk under a bright blue sky, nature’s palette. Inside St. Peter’s, the coffin was placed low to the ground, not on a raised bier, for the throngs of people filing past to pay their last respects.
But a papal funeral is a papal funeral, and those present for the funeral Mass on Saturday, along with millions watching online or on TV around the world, will still observe a solemn moment involving sumptuous Catholic pageantry.
For one thing, the church has more cardinals than ever before, so the procession of cardinals accompanying the coffin will inevitably be longer. When John Paul died, 157 cardinals participated in the ceremony. There are currently 252 cardinals, though not all are expected to attend because of illness or age.
Last year, Francis, who died Monday at 88, simplified the church’s elaborate papal funeral rites, built on centuries of tradition. The differences may not be evident to many observers, but they are meant “to emphasize even more that the funeral of the Roman Pontiff is that of a pastor and disciple of Christ and not of a powerful person of this world,” said Archbishop Diego Ravelli, Master of Apostolic Ceremonies, when the book laying out the rules was published.
The more pastoral focus was consistent with Francis’ disdain for “clericalism” — the tendency of many church leaders to put themselves above their flocks — and its trappings, about which he repeatedly admonished clerics during year-end addresses to the curia.
Some experts say that liturgically, the new rules don’t veer far from the previous rites, with tweaks here or there. The major difference, they say, is that by insisting on being viewed in a coffin, Francis was downplaying the mystical and traditional elements of the papacy, which include the public display of the pope’s body ahead of the funeral.
Another significant change, which is not in the rule book but was announced by the office of liturgical celebrations, is that clerics present at the funeral — from cardinals to bishops to priests — can celebrate the funeral Mass together. Previously, only cardinals and patriarchs could celebrate a papal funeral; opening it to all clergy is in keeping with Francis’ effort to create a humbler, less top-down image of the church.
Most of the funeral will be celebrated in Latin, and there will be incense and hymns and Gregorian chants. Attended by dozens of heads of state, monarchs and other dignitaries, it will be, in any case, a spectacle.
And at the center of it all will be Francis’ simple coffin, on the esplanade of St. Peter’s Basilica. He will be buried in a single wooden coffin, rather than three nested ones as his two predecessors were, though they, too, lay in simple coffins at their funerals.
After the funeral, Francis’ body will be taken the Papal Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, where he chose to be buried in a plain tomb, in the aisle next to the lavish 17th-century chapel containing a famed ancient icon of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus, known as the Salus Populi Romani. Francis was particularly devoted to the icon and prayed there often.
Like St. Peter’s, Santa Maria Maggiore is an opulent concoction of centuries’ worth of frescoes, mosaics and sculptures beneath a coffered ceiling that is trimmed in gold.
In his will Francis asked to be buried “in the earth,” in an undecorated tomb with only the inscription “Franciscus.”
Writing in the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera this week, the journalist and author Aldo Cazzullo noted that in Canto 11 of his “Paradise,” Dante wrote of the death of St. Francis, whom he deeply venerated, saying that the saint of the poor had wanted to be buried in the earth.
Pope Francis, the first pontiff to take the name of the beloved saint, asked to be buried like him, Mr. Cazzullo wrote. “Even in death,” he wrote, Francis “distanced himself from the curia, from a certain idea of the papacy.”
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