An extraordinary array of invitees, spanning heads of state and royals from around the world, as well as refugees, prisoners, transgender people and those who are homeless will descend on St Peter’s Square on Saturday for the funeral of Pope Francis, the groundbreaking liberal pontiff who led the Catholic church for 12 years.
Francis died at the age of 88 on Monday at his home in Casa Santa Marta after a stroke and subsequent heart failure. He had been recovering from double pneumonia that had kept him in hospital for five weeks.
Tens of thousands of mourners filed into St Peter’s Basilica to pay their respects to the late pontiff during the three days in which he lay in state. His coffin was sealed during a private ceremony on Friday night.
The funeral mass begins at 10am local time and will be led by the Italian cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the dean of the college of cardinals.
With at least 130 foreign delegations attending, alongside an estimated 200,000 pilgrims, the funeral has required a huge and complex security operation in the Vatican and Rome, involving thousands of Italian police and military, as well as the Vatican’s Swiss Guards, the smallest army in the world. Soldiers in St Peter’s Square have been equipped with guns that shoot down drones, while rooftop snipers and fighter jets are on standby.
A delegation from Francis’s home country of Argentina, led by its president, Javier Milei, will be seated in the front row during the mass, with Italian leaders, including president Sergio Mattarella and prime minister Giorgia Meloni, in the second row, and other heads of state and royals in the third.
The US president, Donald Trump, who for years clashed with Francis over immigration, and his wife, Melania, are attending, along with Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden.
Other guests include the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, British prime minister, Keir Starmer, French president, Emmanuel Macron, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and Prince William. Zelenskyy said late on Friday if he was not able to travel it would be because he was in “military meetings”.
The 87-page order of service, written in English, Italian and Latin, was published on the Vatican’s website in advance of the funeral.
Pope Francis, a name chosen in honour of Francis of Assisi, the Italian saint who renounced a life of luxury to help the poor, simplified rites for papal funerals last year and was very specific about the requirements for his own , including his guests.
Invited to his funeral mass are delegations from Mediterranea Saving Humans, an Italian NGO that works to protect refugees who cross the Mediterranean, and Refugees in Libya, an NGO that campaigns on behalf of migrants and refugees held in detention camps in the north African country. Francis formed close friendships with both groups.
“He was a true disciple of Jesus – he spoke to everyone,” said Luca Casarini, founder of Mediterranea Saving Humans. “There are those who listened to him, like us. He always encouraged us to save people at sea, to help them escape from Libya or Tunisia, and to welcome them. Then there are those, for example the powerful people, who did the opposite of what he told them.”
Mahamat Daoud, who was held in a detention camp in Libya, where he experienced torture and other abuses, before surviving a treacherous journey across the Mediterranean to Italy in 2023, is among the delegation from Refugees in Libya. Daoud met Francis at his home in the Vatican in late 2023.
“We are feeling really sorry about this death because he was the only pope who really stood with refugees and vulnerable people,” said Daoud. “He helped us, not only when we arrived in Italy, but also when we were struggling in Libya.”
Daoud hopes the funeral will be a unifying event. “We will be alongside people who fight against us, who push us back or force us to live in harmful situations,” he said. “But in the end we are all coming together for this funeral, and we really hope that it might have a unifying effect.”
At the end of the funeral mass, Francis’s simple wooden coffin will be driven slowly to Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica, about 2.5 miles away in Rome’s Esquilino neighbourhood.
The procession will make its way through central Rome, passing key monuments including the Colosseum. As requested by Francis, on arrival at the fourth-century basilica he will be given a final sendoff by a group of 40 people, including prisoners and homeless people.
“Since the beginning of his papacy, Francis set out to focus on people who might be considered the dregs of society by others,” said Robert Mickens, a Rome-based columnist for Union of Catholic Asian News.
Francis is the first pontiff in more than a century not to be buried with great fanfare in the grottoes beneath St Peter’s Basilica.
Instead, his coffin will be entombed in a small niche that until now has been used to store candlestick holders.
As requested in his final testament, the tomb will not be decorated and will be inscribed only with his papal name in Latin: Franciscus.
The burial will be an “intimate” event attended by Francis’s relatives, a Vatican official said.
Amid the funeral, speculation is rife about who will succeed Francis. Cardinals approved nine days of mourning from Saturday, with a conclave – the secret election process to choose a new pope – therefore not expected to begin before 5 May.
