LAST UPDATE | 5 Jan 2023
POPE FRANICS LED the funeral of his predecessor Benedict XVI today in front of tens of thousands of mourners in St Peter’s Square, an event unprecedented in modern times.
Red-clad cardinals, dignitaries and thousands of priests and nuns from around the world gathered to say goodbye to the German theologian, who stunned the Catholic church in 2013 by becoming the first pontiff in six centuries to resign.
For the first time in modern history, the proceedings were led by a sitting pope, Francis, who delivered the homily in Italian as part of a multi-lingual service with a Latin mass.
“Benedict… may your joy be complete as you hear his (God’s) voice, now and forever!” the pontiff said in tribute to his predecessor, who died last Saturday aged 95.
A woman from Donegal was one of the people chosen to read one of the liturgical readings at the funeral mass.
Mary Maguire, from Letterkenny, said her heart was full of “real, real joy” after she read from the First letter of St Peter (1:3-9) at the mass, and that it was an honour to be asked.
Mary’s involvement in the mass was due to her work in the Cathedral parish in the Diocese of Raphoe. She is well known for her work with Saint Vincent De Paul in Letterkenny.
A woman from Co Donegal has read one of the liturgical readings at the Requiem Mass of Pope Emeritus Benedict. Mary Maguire from Letterkenny said it was an honour and a shock to be asked to read | Read more: https://t.co/YjCVC6I0sV pic.twitter.com/nnhJDfXolh
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) January 5, 2023
Initially her didn’t want to accept the invitation but she told RTÉ that her family convinced her to.
“I got such a shock, my initial reaction in my own heart was ‘no’, but then I talked with my family and they encouraged me to go, and said it is was a wonderful opportunity,
I had so much joy in my heart afterwards, real real joy,” she said.
At the end of the service, Francis made the sign of the cross over Benedict’s simple cypress wood coffin and bowed his head, before 12 besuited pallbearers carried it into St Peter’s Basilica.
Benedict will be interred in a tomb in the crypt beneath the basilica, where his predecessor John Paul II’s body lay in state before it was moved for his beatification in 2011. He was made a saint in 2014.
Born Joseph Ratzinger, the ex-pope had not been a head of state for a decade, but world leaders including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni were among those in attendance.
An estimated 50,000 people were in the square for the funeral, according to police, many of them having queued up since dawn to bid farewell.
An estimated 195,000 people had already paid their respects earlier when the body lay in state.
Benedict was the first German pope in 1,000 years and church bells rang out across Germany as the funeral finished this morning, while many Germans were also at the Vatican.
Benedict was regarded as a brilliant theologian but a divisive figure who alienated many Catholics with his staunch defence of conservative doctrine on issues such as abortion.
His eight years as head of the worldwide Catholic Church was also marked by crises, from in-fighting within the Vatican to the global scandal of clerical sex abuse and its cover-up.
When he quit, Benedict said he no longer had the “strength of mind and body” necessary for the task, retiring to a quiet life in a monastery in the Vatican gardens.
His death brought an end to an unprecedented situation of having two “men in white” – he and Francis – living in the tiny city state.
He and Francis, an Argentine Jesuit, were said to get on well, but Benedict’s later interventions meant he stayed a standard-bearer for conservative Catholics who did not like his successor’s more liberal stance.
The last time a pope presided over the funeral of his predecessor was in 1802, when Pius VII led the ceremony for Pius VI – but the circumstances were very different.
Pius VI died in 1799 in exile, a prisoner of France, and was buried in Valence. His successor had his remains exhumed and brought back to Italy, before he was treated to a papal funeral at St Peter’s.
Beyond St Peter’s, many of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics had been expected to follow the funeral proceedings on television and the radio.
In the majority Catholic Philippines, churches held requiem masses for the former pontiff, including at Malolos Cathedral near the capital Manila.
Portugal declared a national day of mourning today, while in Italy, flags were flown at half-mast on public buildings.
The only official delegations were from Germany and Italy.
But other dignitaries, including Belgian and Spanish royals, the presidents of Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Hungary, Slovenia and Togo, and the premiers of the Czech Republic, Gabon and Slovakia among others attended in a personal capacity.
The service followed traditional papal funerals, with a few changes to prayers and readings to reflect Benedict’s status as emeritus pope.
Before being laid in the crypt, his cypress coffin was due to be placed first inside a zinc coffin, then a wooden case.
As is traditional, coins and medals minted during his papacy and a written text describing his pontificate, sealed in a metal cylinder, will be placed alongside his body.
- Additional reporting by Eimer McAuley.
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