“WHOLE WORLD PRESENT”
Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin – who was secretary of state under Francis and is a front-runner to become the next pope – led a mass Sunday morning in St Peter’s Square, which drew 200,000 people according to the Vatican. Many were part of Jubilee youth groups.
He told youngsters from Europe, the US, Latin America, Africa and Asia, that Francis “would have liked to meet you, to look into your eyes, and to pass among you to greet you”.
“With you here, the whole world is truly present”, he said, to applause.
More than 220 of the Church’s 252 cardinals were at Saturday’s funeral. They will gather again on Sunday afternoon at Santa Maria Maggiore to pay their respects at Francis’s tomb.
Only cardinals under the age of 80 are eligible to vote in the conclave. There are 135 currently eligible – most of whom Francis appointed himself.
But experts caution against assuming they will choose someone like him.
Francis, a former archbishop of Buenos Aires who loved being among his flock, was a very different character from his predecessor Benedict XVI, a German theologian better suited to books than kissing babies.
Benedict, in turn was a marked change from his Polish predecessor, the charismatic, athletic and hugely popular John Paul II.
Francis’s changes triggered anger among many conservative Catholics, who hope the next pope will turn the focus back to doctrine.
Some cardinals have admitted the weight of the responsibility that faces them in choosing a new head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.
“We feel very small,” Hollerich said last week. “We have to make decisions for the whole Church, so we really need to pray for ourselves.”
