ROME: Hundreds of thousands of mourners joined world leaders, including US President Donald Trump, to bid farewell Saturday (Apr 26) to Pope Francis, a champion of the poor who strived to forge a more compassionate Catholic church.
The Vatican said 400,000 people packed St Peter’s Square and lined the streets of Rome for the funeral of the first Latin American leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.
After a solemn funeral, the Argentine pontiff’s plain wooden coffin, a testament to a life of humility, was driven slowly to Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore church, where he was interred in a private ceremony.
Cardinals marked his coffin with red wax seals before it was lowered into a tomb set inside an alcove, according to images released by the Vatican.
Guatemalan Maria Vicente, 52, holding a rosary, cried as she watched the coffin being carried into Santa Maria Maggiore, the pope’s favourite Roman church.
“It made me very sad. It’s touching that he left us like that,” she said.
The marble tomb is inscribed with just one word: “Franciscus”, his papal name in Latin.
Trump was among more than 50 heads of state paying tribute to Francis, who died on Monday aged 88 after suffering a stroke.
