VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis honored his predecessor Benedict XVI, the German theologian who made history by retiring, presiding Thursday over a rare requiem Mass for a dead pontiff by a living one before thousands of mourners in St. Peter's Square.
Bells tolled and the faithful applauded as pallbearers carried Benedict's cypress coffin out of the fog-shrouded basilica and rested it before the altar. Benedict's longtime secretary, Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, bent down and kissed a book of the Gospels that was left open on the coffin.
