Ailing Pope departs from tradition in choosing last abode

ROME: When Pope Francis will die, he will not be buried with most of his predecessors in the grottoes beneath St Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican.

Pope Francis is currently ill in hospital with double pneumonia, foreign media reported.

At the end of 2023, the Pope revealed he had ‘already prepared’ his tomb in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome’s Esquilino neighbourhood. The church is one of the four major papal basilicas. Seven popes -- from Honorious III in 1216 to Clement IX in 1669 -- were buried there.

In a further break with tradition, new rites issued last year said Francis will be laid to rest in a single zinc-lined wooden casket. Francis’s predecessor Pope Benedict XVI was buried in three coffins -- including one made from lead -- nested inside each other.

Benedict lay in state inside St Peter’s Basilica and was then buried in a crypt underneath the building. Since St Peter’s was completed in 1626, 24 of 31 -- more than three quarters -- popes have been buried in its grottoes. Pope Benedict was buried in the same tomb that until 2011 was occupied by his predecessor John Paul II, who died in 2005. Pope Francis is still set to be lie in state in St Peter’s Basilica before his funeral.

Last year, the second edition of the ‘Ordo Exsequiarum Romani Pontificis’ (‘Funeral Rites of the Roman Pontiff’) updated the rites originally approved by Pope John Paul. Instead of resting on a catafalque in St Peter’s during the lying-in-state period, Francis’s body will lie in his coffin, which will remain open until the night before his funeral, Vatican News reported. And Francis’s death will be ritually verified in his bedroom, rather than in his private chapel. The rites also state that he will be placed inside his coffin before being carried into St Peter’s.