ROME: Tons of of 1000’s of mourners joined world leaders, together with US President Donald Trump, to bid farewell Saturday (Apr 26) to Pope Francis, a champion of the poor who strived to forge a extra compassionate Catholic church.
The Vatican mentioned 400,000 folks packed St Peter’s Sq. and lined the streets of Rome for the funeral of the primary Latin American chief of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.
After a solemn funeral, the Argentine pontiff’s plain wood coffin, a testomony to a lifetime of humility, was pushed slowly to Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore church, the place he was interred in a non-public ceremony.
Cardinals marked his coffin with crimson wax seals earlier than it was lowered right into a tomb set inside an alcove, based on photos launched 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 favorite Roman church.
“It made me very unhappy. It is touching that he left us like that,” she mentioned.
The marble tomb is inscribed with only one phrase: “Franciscus”, his papal identify in Latin.
Trump was amongst greater than 50 heads of state paying tribute to Francis, who died on Monday aged 88 after struggling a stroke.
