The Catholic Church fired Pope Francis with a massive mass

The dean of the Cardenalicio College, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, stressed that the conductive thread that marked the 12 years of Pope Francis’s pontificate was the “conviction that the Church is a house for all” with the “always open doors.”

“He resorted several times to the image of the Church as” campaign hospital “after a battle with many injured; a specific and eager church to take care of the problems of people and the great evils that tear the contemporary world; a church capable of leaning before each person, beyond all creed or condition, healing their wounds,” he said in the homily he pronounced in the massive mass of exequia.

Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, thousands of bishops and priests, have gathered in the Plaza de San Pedro to give the last goodbye to Pope Francis. Many arrived before 5:30 (local time), when they began opening the access and controls, after several hours of waiting to be able to place themselves in the first ranks.

A small group of relatives of Pope Francis, coming from Argentina, sat near the altar. In addition, more than 130 international delegations were present at the solemn ceremony. Among the attendees, were, for example, US President Donald Trump, Frenchman Emmanuel Macron, British Labor leader Keir Starmer, Argentine President Javier Milei and Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Everyone wanted to make a parenthesis in their agendas to attend farewell, in an unusual event that is assimilated to a kind of geopolitical summit.

But not only the powerful land were at the ceremony. In the first rows a synthesive group, immigrants families and six prisoners from the Roman prison in Rebibbia, which could participate with a special permit. Forty people who, during these 12 years of pontificate, have been touched in some way by the tenderness of the pontiff.

According to data from the Prefecture of Rome, about 200,000 people followed the masquias mass. Only 140,000 could do it within the Plaza de San Pedro; The rest crowded in the surrounding streets to follow it through the large screens that were installed. The city of Rome became an authentic outdoor temple. No one broke the liturgical silence with which the funeral was also followed from the square.

“Without measure” delivery to the last of the Earth

Cardinal Re, 81, recalled that when Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose the name Francisco in March 2013, he anticipated his “programmatic and style choice with which he wanted to project his pontificate, seeking to inspire himself in the spirit of San Francisco de Asís”.

Of this Italian saint he retained “his temperament and his form of pastoral guidance”, establishing a “direct contact with people and with peoples, eager to be close to all, with special attention to people in difficulty, giving themselves without measure, particularly by the last of the earth, the marginalized.”

“It was a Pope in the midst of people with an open heart towards everyone. In addition, he was an attentive Pope to the new that arose in society and what the Holy Spirit raised in the Church,” said the purple.

He stressed that “he always sought to illuminate with the wisdom of the Gospel the problems of our time”, offering an answer “in the light of faith” and encouraging to live as Christians “the challenges and contradictions of these years of change, which he used to qualify as” time change. “

“He had great spontaneity and an informal way to go to everyone, even to the people far from the Church,” he said.

On the other hand, Cardinal Re put the focus on the human warmth of the late pontiff, “deeply sensitive to current dramas”, with which “he really shared the concerns, sufferings and hopes of our globalization time.”

For the dean of the Cardinals College, the “Primate of Evangelization” was the guidance of his pontificate, “spreading with a clear missionary imprint the joy of the Gospel, which was the title of his first apostolic exhortation Gospel joy”.

In the homily he also valued the “innumerable gestures and exhortations in favor of refugees and displaced people” that Francisco raised, and “his insistence on acting in favor of the poor.”

Next, the Cardinal Re made a review of its 47 apostolic trips that began in Lampedusa, island symbol of the emigration drama with thousands of people drowned in the sea.

He especially highlighted the visit to Iraq in 2021, which was “a balm on the open wounds of the Iraqi population, which had suffered so much for the inhuman work of ISIS”, in addition to an impulse for “the interreligious dialogue.”

Mercy, in the center of the Gospel

“Pope Francis always put in the center the Gospel of Mercy, constantly highlighting that God does not tire of forgiving us: He always forgives, whatever the situation of those who ask for forgiveness and return to the right track,” said Cardinal Re.

Thus, he found that “mercy and joy” are two key concepts of Pope Francis against the “culture of discard” before which he always proposed the “culture of the encounter and solidarity.”

He also recalled that the issue of fraternity crossed his entire pontificate as demonstrated by the encyclical letter All brotherswith which “a global aspiration for fraternity wanted to be reborn, because we are all children of the same father who is in heaven.”

As teaching documents, Cardinal Re also cited the encyclical Laudato yeswith which Pope Francis “drew attention to duties and co -responsibility with respect to the common house”, and the document on “human fraternity for world peace and common coexistence”, signed in 2019, during his trip to the United Arab Emirates.

He also stressed that, in the face of the outbreak of so many wars, Pope Francis “raised his voice incessantly imploring peace and inviting wiseness, honest negotiation to find possible solutions, because war,” he said, “is nothing more than death of people, destruction of houses, hospitals and schools.”

Cardinal Re recalled the latest images of Pope Francis during Easter Sunday, when he taught the blessing City and the World From the balcony of the Basilica of San Pedro and then went down to the Plaza de San Pedro to greet from the Papamóvil discovered to the entire great crowd gathered.

“Despite its fragility and final suffering, Pope Francis chose to travel this delivery path until the last day of his earthly life,” said the purple.

“Dear Pope Francis, now we ask you to rule for us and that from heaven you bless the Church, bless Rome, bless the entire world, as you did last Sunday from the balcony of this basilica in a last hug with all the people of God, but ideally also with humanity that seeks the truth with sincere heart and keeps the torch of hope high,” he finally said.

The Mass concluded with a triple prayer that is prayed only at the funerals of the potatoes. After the final blessing he carried out the last praise and farewell rite, called the last recommendation and authentication.

First, it was pronounced by the Pope’s vicar for the Diocese of Rome, Cardinal Baldassare Reina, on the part of the city of which Francisco was a bishop; Then an Eastern patriarch recited on behalf of the Eastern Churches; And Cardinal Giovanni Battista re concluded with a prayer on behalf of the entire Church.

Next, the twelve thirsty, a group of lay people who in the past were in charge of carrying the gestatory chairs of the pontiffs, raised on the shoulders of the Pope’s coffin and entered him again inside the Basilica of San Pedro, and from there start the courtship to the Basilica Santa María la Mayor, where he will be buried.

Thousands of people will accompany the courtship through the streets of Rome until they reach this basilica in which the old icon of the Safety of the Roman people“Salvation of the people of Rome”, the image before which Pope Francis prayed to entrust the virgin his apostolic trips.