Pope cuts three-coffin tradition from papal funerals

VATICAN CITY:Pope Francis has simplified papal funeral rituals to better reflect the head of the Catholic Church’s status as a humble pastor rather than “person of power”, the Vatican said Wednesday.

Deceased popes traditionally have three coffins, one made out of cypress, one of lead and one of elm, which are placed one inside the other, before the papal body is interred. From now on there will be just one simple coffin, made of wood and zinc.

The ascertainment of the pope’s death will no longer take place in the room where he dies, but in his private chapel instead, and his body will be placed immediately in a coffin. The open coffin will then be laid out for veneration by the faithful in St Peter’s Basilica, putting an end to the display of papal bodies on a raised platform, propped up by cushions as per tradition.

With the new rules, Francis wants to show that “the funeral of the Roman pontiff is that of a pastor and disciple of Christ, and not of a powerful man of this world”, Diego Ravelli, master of pontifical liturgical celebrations, told Vatican News. This updated “Ordo Exsequiarum Romani Pontificis”, approved at the end of April by the Argentine pope, replaces a 2000 edition which was used at the funeral of John Paul II in 2005.