120 cardinals, 400 bishops, 4000 priests and 1 pope buried

Italian media, citing police security plans, had Francis presiding over the funeral.

Only Italy and Germany were invited to send official delegations, but other heads of state and government accepted the Vatican’s offer and participated in their ‘private capacity’. They included several other heads of state, at least four prime ministers, and two royal delegations.

Matteo Colonna, a 20-year-old seminarian from Teramo, Italy, said he attended because of the historic nature of the funeral, but it also had a personal resonance.

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“The first spark of my vocation began under Pope Benedict, but became even stronger under Pope Francis,” Colonna said, offering prayers in St. Peter’s Square before his funeral. “There is continuity between these two popes, and the fact that today Francis is celebrating his funeral at Benedict’s memorial service is a historic event.”

Early Thursday morning, the Vatican released the official history of Benedict’s life. A short document written in Latin that was placed in a metal cylinder in his coffin before being sealed and contained coins and medallions minted during the papal period, as well as stolen pallium.

The document pays due attention to Benedict’s historic resignation, calling him “Honorary Pope” and quoting verbatim the Latin words he uttered when announcing his retirement on February 11, 2013. did.

Known as the “logito” or deed, the document “continues to call upon the church to convert, pray, penance and cleanse,” including its outreach to the Anglican and Jewish communities and its efforts to combat clerical sexual abuse. ”, etc., also citing his theological and papal heritage.

The funeral itself is modeled after the code used for the dead Pope, but with some changes considering that Benedict was not Pope when he died.

After Mass, Benedict’s cypress coffin in a zinc coffin before being buried in the crypt of the cave beneath St. Peter’s Basilica, where the tomb of St. John Paul II was before the move placed and then placed in the outer oak coffin. Upstairs.

Although this ritual is new, it has some precedent. In 1802, Pope Pius VII presided over the funeral of his predecessor Pius VI, who had fled to France as a prisoner of Napoleon in 1799, in Saint Peter’s Basilica.

About 200,000 people paid their respects to Benedict during three days of public viewing at the cathedral. One of his last, Friar Rosario Vitale, offered his hour of prayer beside Benedict’s body. He said Benedict gave him a special preparation to begin the process of becoming a priest, which was required due to his physical disability.

“So today I came here to pray on his grave, on his body, and say ‘thank you’ for my future priesthood and my ministry,” he said.

Benedict never intended his retirement to last this long, nearly ten years longer than his eight-year papacy. Uncertain circumstances called for a protocol to guide future popes emeritus to prevent confusion about who was actually responsible.

During St. John Paul II’s quarter-century as pope, Ratzinger spearheaded a crackdown on dissent as head of the Ministry of Faith, fighting against the leftist liberation theology and dissent that spread across Latin America in the 1970s. and took action. Theologians and nuns who disobeyed the Vatican’s strict policy on issues such as sexual morality.

His legacy was marred by clerical sexual abuse scandals, but he was the first to recognize the “filth” of a priest who raped a child, and he was the first to lay the groundwork for the Holy See to punish children. built.

As cardinal and pope, he passed a broad canon that disqualified 848 priests from 2004 to 2014. But survivors of the abuse have failed to sanction the bishop who moved the abuser, identifying him as embodying the ecclesiastical system that has long protected the institution from victims. still held him accountable for the crisis.

A group representing survivors of clerical abuse in Germany called on German officials attending Benedict’s funeral to demand more action from the Vatican against sexual abuse.Eckiger Tisch Germany leaders to demand that Francis issue a “universal canon law” that provides for zero tolerance in dealing with clerical abuse.

“Celebrations commemorating the lives of those who foster abuse like Benedict must end,” said SNAP, a leading US abuse survivor group.

Australia was represented in Rome by Ambassador Chiara Polo of the Holy See.

The Australian flag was flown at half-mast all day Thursday in government departments and institutions in honor of the late Pope.

Cardinal George Pell of Australia was one of the prominent mourners who saw Benedict’s body inside St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican before his funeral mass.