Pope Francis leads final farewell to Benedict before thousands

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis led the funeral of his predecessor Benedict XVI on Thursday in front of tens of thousands of mourners in St Peter´s Square, an event unprecedented in modern times.

Scarlet-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 papal funeral was 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 on Saturday aged 95.

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 pallbearers carried it into St Peter´s Basilica. Benedict will be interred in a tomb in the Vatican Grottoes beneath the basilica where John Paul II´s body lay before being moved for his beatification in 2011.

The Polish pontiff was made a saint in 2014. In a private ceremony after Thursday´s funeral, Benedict´s coffin was tied with a red ribbon and placed in a zinc coffin, before being sealed and put inside a wood casket, according to the Vatican.

Coins and medals minted during his papacy and a written text describing his pontificate, sealed in a metal cylinder, were placed alongside his body. 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.

Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen, 90, also attended after being granted permission by a court to travel following his arrest last year under the city´s national security law. An estimated 50,000 people were in St Peter´s Square for the funeral, according to police, many of them having queued up since dawn in thick fog to bid farewell.

“Benedict is a bit like my father, so I had to pay homage to him,” said Cristina Grisanti, a 59-year-old from Milan, who hailed the former pope´s “purity, his candour, his mildness”. An estimated 195,000 people had already paid their respects earlier in the week when the body lay in state at the basilica.