(Vatican City) Tens of thousands of the faithful marched Monday under the gold of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome to meditate before the remains of Benedict XVI, who died on Saturday at the age of 95 and whose funeral will be celebrated Thursday by the Pope Francois.
A long queue snaked all day through St. Peter’s Square surrounded by Bernini’s colonnade, attended by numerous media and a thousand members of the police.
By 7 p.m., when the doors of the huge basilica closed, the Vatican had counted the attendance of 65,000 people. The faithful will be able to gather again Tuesday and Wednesday from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. (Eastern time).
“It seemed normal to me to come and pay homage to him after all he has done for the Church,” Sister Anna-Maria, an Italian nun, told AFP.
“He was a great pope, deep and unique”, believes for her part Francesca Gabrielli, who came especially from Tuscany, who appreciates “the atmosphere of meditation” reigning in the basilica.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY VATICAN MEDIA, VIA AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Believers gather before the remains of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI
The remains of Joseph Ratzinger rest on a catafalque stretched with fabric, flanked by two Swiss Guards in ceremonial dress, in front of the main altar of the basilica dominated by a bronze baldachin with twisted colonnades.
The deceased pope is dressed in red – the color of papal mourning – and wearing a white miter adorned with a golden braid, a rosary and a crucifix in his hands.
Faithful and tourists were able to gather for a few moments – without stopping – in front of the body, most photographing with their smartphone, some praying or making the sign of the cross.
Meloni presents
Far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was among the first visitors.
Saint Peter’s Basilica, an architectural masterpiece combining Renaissance and Baroque styles, completed in 1626, is one of the most important places of Catholicism, since it houses the burial place of the apostle Saint Peter, disciple of Christ and first bishop of Rome, of whom the popes are the successors.
PHOTO BY RICCARDO DE LUCA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was among the first visitors.
Brilliant theologian and fervent guardian of dogma, Benedict XVI, who had resigned in 2013 because of his declining strength, died peacefully Saturday morning at the monastery where he had lived since then, in the Vatican gardens.
Early Monday, his body was transferred to the basilica where a blessing ritual was held, in the presence of his close entourage, including his private secretary, Bishop Georg Gänswein.
Guardian of dogma
It is Pope Francis who will preside over the funeral of his predecessor on Thursday, an unprecedented event in the two thousand year history of the Catholic Church which will put an end to the unusual cohabitation of the two men in white.
The ceremony, “solemn but sober” according to the Vatican, will begin at 9:30 a.m. (3:30 a.m. Eastern time) in St. Peter’s Square, where the funeral of John Paul II had attracted a million people in 2005.
The Spanish royal house announced the presence of Queen Sophia of Greece, wife of the former sovereign in exile Juan Carlos. Polish President Andrzej Duda will also be present.
The first German pope in modern history will then be buried in the crypt of the basilica where John Paul II rested until 2011, Holy See spokesman Matteo Bruni said on Monday.
Benedict XVI’s last words, spoken in Italian hours before his death on Saturday in the presence of a nurse at his bedside, were: “Lord, I love you,” Bishop Gänswein reported.
After his eight years of a pontificate marked by multiple crises, Benedict XVI had been caught up in early 2022 by the drama of pedocrime in the Church. Questioned by a report in Germany on his management of sexual violence when he was Archbishop of Munich, he broke his silence to ask for “pardon” but assured that he had never covered up a child criminal.
A subject raised by Valerie Michalak, a German who came with her husband and their four children, originally from Dortmund, leaving the basilica: “we know that he was aware of certain details and he did not help to open the box of Pandora”, she regrets.
Born in 1927, Joseph Ratzinger taught theology for 25 years in Germany before being appointed Archbishop of Munich.
He then became the strict guardian of the dogma of the Church for another quarter of a century in Rome at the head of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith.
Last pope to have participated in the Second Vatican Council, he however defended a conservative line at the head of the Church, in particular on abortion, homosexuality and euthanasia.