POPE FRANCIS HAS praised Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s “acute and gentle thought” as he presided over a general audience in the Vatican while thousands paid tribute to the former pope on the final day of public viewing of his body in St Peter’s Basilica.

Francis was greeted by an enthusiastic crowd in the Paul VI auditorium and shouts of “Viva il papa” or “Long live the pope” as he arrived for his weekly appointment with the faithful.

This week’s audience drew an unusually large crowd as more than 130,000 people have flocked to the Vatican following Benedict’s death on Saturday and lined up to pay their respect to the German pope, who is lying in state in the basilica.

Francis is due to preside over Benedict’s funeral tomorrow, an event that is drawing heads of state and royalty despite Benedict’s requests for simplicity and Vatican efforts to keep the first Vatican funeral for an emeritus pope in modern times low-key.

Francis drew applause when he opened his remarks by noting all those who were outside paying tribute to Benedict, whom he called a “great master of catechesis”.

“His acute and gentle thought was not self-referential, but ecclesial, because he always wanted to accompany us in the encounter with Jesus,” Francis said.

Later today, Vatican officials are to place Benedict’s body in three coffins — one of cypress wood, one of zinc, and then a second wooden casket — along with a written account of his papacy, the coins minted during his pontificate and his pallium stoles.

The coffins are to be sealed before tomorrow’s funeral and burial in the crypt once occupied by the tomb of St John Paul II in the grottos underneath the basilica.

Benedict, who was elected pope in 2005 following John Paul’s death, became the first pope in six centuries years to resign when he announced in 2013 he no longer had the strength to lead the Catholic Church.

After Francis was elected pope, he spent his nearly decade-long retirement in a converted monastery in the Vatican Gardens.

Controversies

Unlike his successor, a Jesuit who delights in being among his flock, Benedict was more at home with his books, a cat-lover who delighted in study and playing the piano.

He was dubbed “God’s Rottweiler” in a previous post as chief doctrinal enforcer, and fiercely defended traditional Catholic teaching on abortion, euthanasia and gay marriage.

But as pope he struggled to contain numerous scandals in the church.

Benedict was the first pope to meet with victims of clerical child sex abuse, but critics said he did not go far enough in addressing the problem and decades of cover-ups.

There were other controversies, from comments that angered the Muslim world to a money-laundering scandal at the Vatican bank and a personal humiliation when, in 2012, his butler leaked secret papers to the media.

After he quit, Benedict remained a flag-bearer for the conservative wing of the church.

With his death, those who battled Francis’ more liberal outlook “lose a living symbol”, noted Italian Vatican observer Marco Politi.