If you look at Vatican TV live right now, you’ll see a queue of people lining up inside St Peter’s basilica to visit the coffin at the top with the body of Pope Francis. It’s open and you can see the corpse…looking a bit grey, it must be said, but recognisably him. I recall the funerals I attended of his two predecessors. I was in those queues then and I remember the phones being raised as soon as people got into the basilica; before they saw anything of the spectacle, their phone saw it.
Pope Benedict, I’m afraid, looked awful as a corpse…rather dark grey. I said as much to an American Franciscan friar in the basilica who obligingly was taking confessions, and he agreed: “not looking his best”, he thought. We took the view that whoever had laid out the body had done a rubbish job.
