President of the ceremony on Saint-Pierre square, François paid tribute to “the wisdom” of Pope Emeritus, whose funeral attracted a much less important crowd than those of his predecessor, John Paul II.
by Sarah Belouezane (Rome, Vatican, Special Envoy)
The mist that encloses the dome of the Saint-Pierre Basilica Thursday, January 5, in the morning is gradually rising. Standing, while his knee pains force him to move in a wheelchair, François awaits the coffin that the sediari, the porters designated to accompany Benoît XVI, who died on December 31 at 95, towards his last home, advance towards him . The pope puts a hand on the beer and leans, as a sign of meditation. A final tribute to his predecessor whose funeral he has just presided over. The two popes that cohabited the Vatican, in an unprecedented situation, for almost ten years, face each other. One remains, the other part.
A few tens of minutes earlier, François pronounced his homily in front of tens of thousands of people gathered at Place Saint-Pierre. On his right, cardinals and prelates, an impressive flowerbed of white and red which contrasts with the black of rigor in the square opposite, where personalities came to “private title”. The funeral of Benedict XVI, Pope emeritus since his resignation in 2013, are not a state event, only representatives of the Italian and German governments (homeland of Joseph Ratzinger) were officially invited.
In mourning outfit, the kings and queens of Spain and Belgium are present, the presidents of Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia or Togo. France was represented by Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior responsible for worship.
a great theologian
On the other side of the barriers, facing the basilica, a host of faithful who came to attend the first funeral of a pope for almost twenty years. Place Saint-Pierre which can accommodate 60,000 people only filled two thirds on Thursday. About 50,000 people made the trip, according to the authorities, against 65,000 expected. Very far from the crowds recorded during the funeral of John Paul II in 2005, when a million people had made the trip. In the previous days, they had also been several hundred thousand, up to six hundred thousand a day, to come and meditate in front of the body of Karol Wojtyla inside the Saint-Pierre basilica.
None of that for Benoît. They were 200,000 to meditate during the three days when his body was exposed. Admittedly, John Paul II died in the exercise of his function, when Joseph Ratzinger was cloistered for ten years in the Monastery Mater Ecclesiae, between the walls of the Vatican, but the event seems to confirm that, Benoît XVI, great theologian And major thinker of Catholicism in the 20th century century, has remained less popular than its predecessor. If he was appreciated in the Curia and in conservative circles, he was less outside the institution, unlike his successor François.
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