People gather along Via dei Fori Imperiali as the coffin of late Pope Francis is transported from St Peter's Basilica to Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica, during the funeral ceremony in Rome on April 26, 2025. (Photo by Damien MEYER/ AFP)

Not even death stopped Pope Francis from being with the people he loved most.  

Francis, the first pope from the Global South and the first Jesuit to lead the 1.2 billion-strong Catholic world, got his wish to have a simple funeral — a goodbye for a pastor, not a sovereign.  

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The Funeral Mass on Saturday, the eve of the Feast of Divine Mercy, was a fitting choice for the Church's 266th pontiff, who made mercy the central theme of his papacy. 

He was 88.  

His simple wooden casket was a striking contrast to the grandeur of Saint Peter’s Square, framed by Renaissance master Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s colonnade and the towering figures of dozens of heads of state, government leaders, and reigning monarchs who gathered to honor him.  

But just like he did during his 12-year pontificate, he held court not inside the palatial walls of the Vatican, but among the ordinary people he loved.  

Homeless people, prisoners, migrants, and transgender individuals lined up to welcome his mortal remains at the marble steps of Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, where the pope chose to be buried.  

It was the group of people he fervently defended, sometimes even at the cost of putting him at odds with the very same clerical hierarchy he led.  

Catholic faithful light candles during a requiem Mass vigil for the eternal repose of Pope Francis at the Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Cubao, Quezon City, on April 22, 2025. The cathedral courtyard glows with hundreds of candles, reflecting the faithful’s love and gratitude for the pontiff’s life of service and compassion. Maria Tan, ABS-CBN News

Francis’s famous “who am I to judge” for queer people, his shift from the blanket rule that disallowed communion for the remarried, and his insistence on interreligious dialogue that saw him washing the feet of Muslim women earned him sharp criticisms from high-ranking clergies.  

But his convictions continued to echo as those marginalized people he often spoke about stood side-by-side with cardinals and priests and were given the same place of honor in bidding him farewell.  

'Shared loss': Filipino Catholics bid Pope Francis farewell 

For his tomb, he insisted there would be no other ornamentations, except a replica of his pectoral cross, which he had worn since his days as Argentina’s archbishop, and a simple inscription of his name, Franciscus.  

Francis’s final resting place is in a side aisle of the church, between the Sforza Chapel and the Pauline Chapel, which houses his beloved Byzantine icon of Salus Populi Romani. 

There, pilgrims would have easier access to the pontiff, unlike the Vatican grottoes, where many of his predecessors were interred. 

Why Pope Francis chose basilica outside Vatican as burial site 

The Marian Basilica is found in the Esquiline district in Rome, one of the famed seven hills of the Eternal City, and has a strong presence of migrants.  

The church was also a stone-throw away from Santa Pudenziana, home of the chaplaincy of the Filipino community in Rome.  

Preaching to build bridges instead of walls, his defense of the migrants earned him reproach from some politicians.  

But Francis pressed on, embracing migrants in Lampedusa, Lesbos, and all the way to his home region in the Americas.  

“He was a Pope among the people, with an open heart towards everyone,” said Cardinal Giovanni Batista Re, dean of the College of Cardinals, in his homily delivered before a quarter of a million people, who gathered at the Saint Peter’s Square and all the way to the Via Della Conciliazione for the Funeral Mass.  

“He was also a Pope attentive to the signs of the times and what the Holy Spirit was awakening in the Church.” 

Pope Francis's tomb at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Photo courtesy of Vatican News

After a little more than two-hour Funeral Mass, Francis made his way back to the streets where he is most at home.  

The casket was aboard the modified popemobile.  

It exited the Vatican walls, crossed the Tiber River, and threaded the streets of Rome, where thousands more people lined up to get a final glimpse of their beloved pope. 

Applause broke as the hearse passed by. Others yelled “Papa Francesco,” “grazie” (thank you), and the ever-familiar “viva il Papa.”  

The popemobile passed by iconic Roman landmarks. There was the Church of Gesu, the mother church of his religious order, the Society of Jesus. There was the Colosseum, where he led the Way of the Cross every Good Friday, except during the pandemic and when his health started to deteriorate.  

Some Romans were seen looking down from their home windows, while many raised their mobile phones to take a photo of the pope, who patiently took selfies with those he encountered, especially the young. 

The procession was a reminder of how he regularly toured Saint Peter’s Square to meet pilgrims, young and old, believers and non-believers.  

Be it in his years of vigor and frailty, amid rain and the striking heat of the Roman sun in the summer, he was constantly seen motioning to his guards to let people come near him.  

There was the severely disfigured man in the first year of his papacy, the boy with cerebral palsy, the teacher who made him drink a traditional Argentine drink, and a group of clowns who cater to the sick.  

“His charisma of welcome and listening, combined with a manner of behavior in keeping with today’s sensitivities, touched hearts and sought to reawaken moral and spiritual sensibilities,” Cardinal Re said.  

“The guiding thread of his mission was also the conviction that the Church is a home for all, a home with its doors always open.”  

THE BALCONY WHERE IT ALL BEGAN 

For many papal watchers, the culmination of the Franciscan papacy was already signed and sealed from his very first appearance at the central loggia of Saint Peter’s Basilica on March 13, 2013.  

“Buona sera,” he said. A simple “good evening” from the man who just inherited the immense job of leading the world’s largest and most enduring institution.  

He was dressed in the traditional white papal cassock, but absent was the ermine-trimmed red velvet mozzetta, the short cape-like garment worn around the shoulder of popes.  

He also refused a pectoral cross made of gold. No red leather shoes, either.   

Technically, a pope is a monarch, although an elected one and not by hereditary succession.  

But by referring to himself simply as the Bishop of Rome, Francis stepped further away from the shadows of the old Roman Empire in favor of a more pastoral role.   

“How I would love a church that is poor and for the poor,” Francis said when he explained his decision to name himself after Francis of Assisi, a 12th-century saint known for his poverty.  

He brought this conviction even to his death.  

Eagled-eyed mourners were quick to point out that the black leather shoes the pope was wearing inside his casket were the same frayed and worn-out pair he used when he was alive.  

Inside Saint Peter’s Basilica, where his body lay in state for three days, cardinals, archbishops, and foreign dignitaries took turns standing vigil.  

But unlike the past papacies, there was nothing like a distinct papal courtier, like the ones led by Stanisław Dziwisz in John Paul II’s and Georg Ganswein in Benedict XVI’s.  

Instead, the simplest yet greatest of grief witnessed in the basilica was that of the outsiders — his longtime nun-friend Sister Genevieve Jeanningros, his healthcare workers and secretaries, and the thousands of pilgrims who patiently lined for hours just to say their quick goodbyes.  

One last look: Pope Francis' longtime nun-friend seen in tears before his casket 

It was also on the same balcony where his journey toward his final resting place at Santa Maria Maggiore began.  

After imparting his first apostolic blessing “urbi et orbi” (to the city and to the world), he asked for the microphone to be brought out again.  

He told the jubilant crowd that he intended to immediately go and pray to the Madonna.  

The following day, he went to Santa Maria Maggiore to pray for the beginning of his new ministry.  

A handout picture provided by the Vatican Media shows Pope Francis performing the rite of the washing of the feet on Holy Thursday in Rome, Italy on April 6, 2023. Vatican Media Handout

Throughout his 12-year pontificate, each of the 47 apostolic journeys that brought him to 68 countries began and ended before the same image of Mary.  

And so elsewhere across the world, a wave of grief swept the peripheries he always championed. 

In his home country of Argentina, where he is remembered as Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who went to the slums and took the bus and the subway on his way to work, grief-stricken Catholics camped out in front of the cathedral where he once served.

In the Philippines, where he experienced the brunt of a storm but still saw the largest papal event to date, churches toll their bells upon news of his death. 

And in Gaza, the tiny parish he called every night since the war broke out, parishioners gathered, no longer to see him through a video call, but to watch on television the funeral of the man who cared for them. 

Argentina mourns Pope Francis with 'symbolic embrace' at open-air mass 

Monks in Thailand prayed for him. South Koreans braved rainy weather to go to Myeongdong Cathedral, where he once presided over a Holy Mass. Football stadiums across Europe offered moments of silence before game kick-off.  

“Pope Francis has now returned to the Father, but his legacy as a Supreme Pontiff — that is, as bridge-builder —will never be forgotten by the Church,” Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) President Kalookan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David said. 

The day after his funeral, hundreds immediately lined up to see Pope Francis’s tomb.  

A single white rose rests on the marble tomb.  

As throngs of mourners continued to seek the pontiff called the “People’s Pope,” his words during his last World Youth Day in Lisbon echo: “Todos, todos, todos.” (Everyone, everyone, everyone.)  -- With reports from Agence France-Presse   

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