Pope Francis was laid to rest in Rome on Saturday with a moving, multi-lingual ceremony that reflected his humble approach to the papacy and the global adoration he enjoyed as the “People’s Pope.”
Hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the streets around St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican to pay their final respects to a man whose message, from the very first days of his papacy in March 2013 to his last on 21 April 2025, was that the church was a home for all—no matter their race, class, religion, or sexual orientation.
Presidents, cardinals, key world figures, and royalty attended the requiem mass held in front of St. Peter’s Basilica as Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re eulogized a man who spoke to everyone “especially to the marginalized, the least among us.”
“Rich in human warmth and deeply sensitive to today’s challenges, Pope Francis truly shared the anxieties, sufferings, and hopes of this time of globalization,” Re told an audience that included President Donald Trump, former President Joe Biden, Britain’s Prince William, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
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The proceedings were broadcast on large screens set up along the Tiber River and throughout the city to accommodate the mass crowds. Sister Margaret Wyrodek, of Poland, tells TIME that she wanted to accompany Pope Francis on his final journey because he had accompanied so many through their own difficult journeys. “He was the parish priest to the whole world,” she says. “He comforted the marginalized, the poor, the people who were abused, the people on the sidelines.”
Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis was the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires and the first non-European Pontiff in more than 1,200 years. He was a man loved for his genial humility and how he ushered the Catholic Church into a contemporary era by preaching tolerance for those that the church had long denigrated. “He made it clear that all are welcome at God’s table,” says Patrick Gallagher, a gay American who has lived in Rome for the past 15 years. “Because of Francis, I finally felt I could be a Catholic again.”
Among the mourners clustered along the riverbank next to the Vatican were scores of youths wearing bright green T-shirts and scarves. They had planned to come to Rome on a special pilgrimage that was to culminate with a papal audience and the now-postponed canonization of Carlo Acutis, a British-born Italian who died of leukemia aged 15 in 2006. Acutis became known as the “millennial saint” for his devotion to the church and inspired a new generation of Catholics worldwide. Instead, they arrived just in time for the Pope’s funeral. “I am disappointed,” says 15-year-old Julie Brugnoni, who landed in Rome on Thursday with a delegation of teenagers from the northern Italian town of Cremona. “I was so excited to meet Pope Francis, because he loved teenagers. Instead, we are here to say goodbye.”
The teenagers appreciated Pope Francis’ commitment to raising awareness of climate change, especially how it impacts younger generations. In 2015, the Pope published a landmark encyclical letter to the Catholic congregation, lamenting environmental degradation and global warming, and warning of “serious consequences for all of us” if such trends were to continue. “He preached that if we want a better world, we must protect God’s creation,” says Alberto Razzetti, 15.
The group fell silent as they watched the proceedings on a screen set up on the piazza. Pallbearers dressed in black suits hoisted Pope Francis’ coffin on their shoulders. The simple wood coffin, lined with zinc and marked with a white cross, symbolized another departure from church tradition.
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Historically, Popes have been buried in three-tiered caskets made of cypress, lead, and oak and entombed under ornate marble fixtures in St. Peter’s Basilica. But Francis, who had taken a vow of poverty as a Jesuit priest, typically shunned the trappings of papal luxury. That vow extended to his death. Last year, he amended the rules for papal funerals, simplifying the process and ushering a more humble approach into the Catholic Church, something that further endeared him to his followers.
“It is just another demonstration that the trappings of wealth are worth nothing in this world,” says Ricardo Montalto, an elderly Italian man who sought refuge from the bright sun under a shop awning during the funeral proceedings. “Under God, we are all the same, whether we are cardinals, migrants, or poor.”
The pallbearers loaded the coffin into a white pickup truck, which commenced a slow journey out of St. Peter’s Square, followed by thousands of mourners. Pope Francis specified in his will that he did not want to be buried in the Vatican like most of his predecessors, but at Santa Maria Maggiore, a basilica on the other side of Rome near the central train station. The church is a Baroque jewel in an area populated by migrants, the homeless, and the poor—the people Francis had long sought to uplift. He made a point to pray at the basilica before and after every foreign trip, and often requested to stop there whenever he was on his way home from his increasingly frequent hospital stays.
Sister Maria Rose Pellicioli, an Italian nun from a school for the poor outside of Rome, waited near the steps of Santa Maria Maggiore for the funeral procession to arrive. She first met Pope Francis 12 years ago when she brought a group of her students for an audience, and believes that his blessing has kept her and her students safe ever since. Coming to bid him farewell, she says, was her way of thanking him for all that he had done for the world. For Pellicioli, the day was bittersweet. “We have joy that we knew him, and pain that we have lost him. But he is coming home to God, and in this way he stays with us,” she says.
Pope Francis’ commitment to outreach and inclusion was underscored by a hand-picked honor guard of migrants, Muslims, the homeless, prisoners, and transgender people who awaited his arrival at Santa Maria Maggiore. They were among the last to bid farewell as the pallbearers mounted the steps to deposit the coffin in a plain marble tomb marked with the simple inscription “Franciscus.”
The actual burial, next to a chapel containing a famed Byzantine icon painting of the Madonna and child, was closed to the public. Outside, the crowd started drifting away, with thoughts turning to the future leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.
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In the coming days, the College of Cardinals will gather in Rome for a conclave to elect Francis’ successor. The next Pope could extend Francis’ progressive legacy or return the church to the more dogmatic tradition embraced by his predecessors.
Francis appointed roughly 80 of the 120 cardinals who will choose the next Pope, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will elect someone in his mold. Francis’ legacy is mixed. He opened communion to divorced couples and homosexuality, and he restricted the Latin Mass, which he deemed exclusionary. But he stopped short of allowing women to become deacons. He also worked to make sure the College of Cardinals better reflects the modern church by including more representatives from the global south, many of whom are more conservative on issues of homosexuality, women’s rights, and divorce.
At the funeral, however, the crowd appeared overwhelmingly in favor of Francis’ openness to the world, no matter the specific questions of church doctrine.
“That’s why I’m feeling optimistic,” says Gallagher, the aforementioned gay American who has lived in Rome for over a decade. “Pope Francis shifted attitudes. I have seen how people embraced his goodness, how they celebrated his tolerance and humility. That will remain no matter who comes next. He has changed the church.”
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