Pope Francis has been buried inside his favourite Rome church after a funeral mass in St Peter’s Square, the Vatican said on Saturday.
The pontiff, who died on Monday aged 88, was laid to rest during a 30-minute burial ceremony which started at 1:00 pm (1100 GMT) at the Santa Maria Maggiore basilica in the Italian capital.
The coffin of the pontiff arrived on Saturday at the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome for burial, following his funeral at the Vatican.
It was gathered that the Pope’s coffin left the Vatican on a white popemobile following his funeral at St Peter’s Square on Saturday.
Tens of thousands of people lined the route as the popemobile carrying the coffin of the Catholic church leader, who died on Monday aged 88, was driven to his final resting place.
Chronicle NG reports that tens of thousands of mourners flooded into St Peter’s Square on Saturday for the funeral of pontiff, the champion of the poor and the Catholic Church’s first Latin American leader.
Some sympathisers waited overnight to be first in the queue for the ceremony, attended by world leaders including US President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, who met briefly in St Peter’s Basilica on the sidelines of Pope Francis’s funeral.
The Argentine, who died on Monday aged 88, sought to steer the centuries-old Church into a more inclusive direction during his 12-year papacy.
