Casket sealed after 250,000 paid respects to Pope Francis ahead of his funeral
Tens of thousands queued up outside St. Peter's Basilica on the last day to pay respects to Pope Francis before his April 26 funeral.
ROME ‒ Queues of faithful filed into St. Peter's to bid farewell to Pope Francis before his casket was sealed ahead of his April 26 funeral.
The Vatican said more than 250,000 people have paid their respects to the Pope, lying in state in St. Peter's. The Basilica shutt its doors for only three hours April 25, between 2:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. local time.
The Pope's casket was sealed in a private evening ceremony.
The body of the 88-year-old pope, who died April 21 in his rooms at the Vatican's Santa Marta guesthouse after suffering a stroke, was brought to St. Peter's in a solemn procession on April 23.
Some waited hours for the chance to spend a few minutes inside the basilica and pay their respects.
"It's a very strong feeling (to be here)," said Patricio Castriota, a visitor from Argentina, the pope's homeland. "This farewell was very sad, but I thank God that I was able to see him".
"He's the only pope we've had who came from South America, a pope who had many good intentions for the Catholic Church," said Castriota. "He cleaned up (a lot) of the bad, maybe not all of it, but he tried."
Francis was the first pontiff from the Americas and was known for an unusually charming, and even humorous, demeanour.
But his 12-year papacy was sometimes turbulent, with Francis seeking to overhaul a divided institution but battling with traditionalists who opposed his many changes.
"He humanised the church, without desacralising it," said Cardinal Francois-Xavier Bustillo, who leads the Church on the French island of Corsica.
A formal summary of Francis' papacy, written in Latin, was to be placed into his casket as it was sealed. It described him as a "beloved and simple pastor" who left "a marvellous testimony of humanity, of a holy life and of universal fatherhood."
A conclave to choose a new pontiff is unlikely to start before May 6. In the meantime, cardinals present in Rome who have assumed temporary control of the 1.4 billion-member Roman Catholic Church are meeting daily, in a so-called general congregation.
The city is bracing ahead of the arrival of hundreds of high-profile delegations attending the funeral, including U.S. President Donald Trump, who will be flying into Rome late on April 25.