Closing summary
This blog will be closing shortly. Thank you for following along and reading the updates. Here is a summary of the day’s events:
Pope Francis has been eulogised as “a pope among the people, with an open heart towards everyone” during a funeral mass that brought together an array of mourners, from pilgrims and refugees to powerful world leaders and royals. The crowd erupted into applause as the late pontiff’s wooden coffin was carried from the altar of the 16th-century St Peter’s Basilica, where it had laid in state for three days, by 14 white-gloved pallbearers and into the square for the open-air ceremony.
Applause also rang out when the Italian cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, who presided over the funeral mass, spoke of Francis’s care for immigrants, his constant pleas for peace, the need for negotiations to end wars and the importance of the climate. At least 400,000 people turned out for Pope Francis’s funeral at the Vatican and lined Rome’s streets, Italy’s interior minister said on Saturday afternoon.
Pope Francis, who famously refused to judge gay or divorced Catholics, believed the Church “is a home for all”, Battista Re said in his funeral homily. Francis was driven by “the conviction that the Church is a home for all, a home with its doors always open … a Church capable of bending down to every person, regardless of their beliefs or condition, and healing their wounds,” he said.
Leaders from more than 150 countries attended the funeral mass, including the US president, Donald Trump, who had repeatedly clashed with Pope Francis over immigration, and his wife, Melania. UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, French president, Emmanuel Macron, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, former US president Joe Biden, Argentinian president Javier Milei, the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni and Prince William were also among the guests.
Cardinals performed the rite of burial for Pope Francis at his simple tomb inside Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica. The burial ceremony on Saturday was private, attended by top cardinals and people close to the pope. Video provided by the Vatican showed Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who is running the Vatican in between papacies, blessing Francis’ coffin before it was interred. Francis’ tomb has been constructed using stone from Liguria, the Italian region where his grandparents once lived. The simple tomb bears just the inscription “Franciscus” and a replica of his pectoral cross.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared to receive a round of applause as he attended the funeral of Pope Francis. The crowd of assembled world leaders could be heard clapping as the Ukrainian president left St Peter’s Basilica, where he had paid his respects in front of the pontiff’s coffin ahead of the funeral ceremony.
Trump and Zelenskyy used their time at the Vatican while attending the funeral of Pope Francis to discuss a possible ceasefire with Russia, with the Ukrainian president releasing a photograph of a seemingly intense conversation in St Peter’s Basilica. The White House described the meeting as “very productive”, while Zelenskyy said on X that the talk with the US president was very symbolic and had the “potential to become historic, if we achieve joint results”.
Trump, Zelenskyy, Macron and Starmer had a “positive meeting” on the sidelines of Pope Francis’s funeral, the French presidency said on Saturday.
Starmer and Zelenskyy agreed to work intensively to maintain the positive momentum in peace talks to end the war with Russia, Starmer’s office said on Saturday. “They discussed positive progress made in recent days to secure a just and lasting peace in Ukraine,” a Downing Street spokesperson said in a statement after Starmer and Zelenskyy met in Rome, where world leaders gathered on Saturday for Pope Francis’s funeral at the Vatican. Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said Zelenskyy also had a separate meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron.
The 90-minute funeral mass for the late pope was celebrated by 220 cardinals, 750 bishops and more than 4,000 priests. More than 2,000 journalists from around the world travelled to Rome to cover the event.
The public can begin visiting Pope Francis’s tomb at the Roman basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore “as early as Sunday morning”, Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni announced on Friday.
You can also catch up on the day’s events with our main story and a picture gallery linked below:
Updated
With songs, candles, flags and prayers, Buenos Aires mourners marked the burial of pontiff and native son Pope Francis on Saturday.
As the 88-year-old was being laid to rest an ocean away in Rome, thousands gathered by Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral for dawn vigils and a mass of remembrance, reports Agence France-Presse.
They were urged to take up the activist mantle of Latin America’s first pope and to carry on his life’s work. “Let us be the outgoing church that Francis always wanted us to be, a restless church that mobilises,” Buenos Aires’ archbishop Jorge García Cuerva told a funeral mass.
Braving rain and the an autumn chill, dozens of people set up tents in the city’s famed Plaza de Mayo for an overnight vigil until 5am local time (8am GMT), when Pope Francis’s funeral began in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican.
Images of the pope and the Virgin of Lujan were illuminated with candles, bread was broken and flags were flown, reports AFP.
Iara Amado, a 25-year-old social worker, said she wanted the vigil “to reclaim the pope’s legacy, to transform the sadness left by his departure into a beacon of hope.”
Mourners hung banners with some of the most emblematic phrases of Francis’s papacy: “Make a ruckus” and “dream big.” An image of the pope with the inscription “pray for me” was projected on to a nearby obelisk.
Lucas Pedro, a 40-year-old teacher, told AFP that those gathered did so “with a deep sense of gratitude”.
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