Pope Francis’s Funeral: The Powerful and the Pilgrims Gather, and Their Mourning Clothes Tell a Story
On Saturday, the funeral of Pope Francis welcomed tens of thousands of pilgrims and mourners, as well as multiple heads of state and dignitaries, to St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City.
The late Pope Francis has been lying in state in St. Peter’s Basilica for three days following his death on Easter Monday.
The mass was held outdoors at 10 a.m. local time, with over 250,000 people in attendance.
Over 130 delegations were in attendance, with world leaders including U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who had a “productive” meeting prior to the ceremony, according to reports. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron also attended, as well as former U.S. President Joe Biden and wife Jill Biden.
The solemn ceremony lasted for just over two hours, with red-robed cardinals participating and priests and deacons from across the world offering Communion to pilgrims in the square. Latin verses and Gregorian chants echoed through the piazza up to the clear blue skies. While the crowd mostly stayed hush, applause broke out when pallbearers for Pope Francis’s coffin began to take it through St. Peter’s Basilica doors one last time.
Francis was a “Pope among the people, with an open heart towards everyone,” Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, who led the ceremony, said in the homily. “Rich in human warmth and deeply sensitive to today’s challenges, Pope Francis truly shared the anxieties, sufferings and hopes of this time of globalization.” Re highlighted Francis’s desire for the end of conflict, and favor for refugees and displaced persons around the world.
“Faced with the raging wars of recent years, with their inhuman horrors and countless deaths and destruction, Pope Francis incessantly raised his voice imploring peace and calling for reason and inviting honest negotiation to find possible solutions. War, he said, results in the death of people and the destruction of homes, hospitals and schools. War always leaves the world worse than it was before: it is always a painful and tragic defeat for everyone,” Re added.
The piazza’s crowd of clergy and political leaders looked like a brilliant patchwork striped black, red, and white: The crimson robes of the Cardinals and their 12-inch white ceremonial mitres, the solemn black funeral clothes of delegations, and the white vestments of participating priests and church people. Further afield, there were purple, white, and black vestments depending on the clergy.
As the pope’s often-used tailor Filippo Sorcinelli recently told Vogue, the clothing of the late Pope Francis articulated his more humble sensibilities through his simple vestment choices. Sorcinelli, who creates liturgical garments with his design studio, Atelier Lavs, creates sacred clothing deeply inspired by medieval art and architecture. For Francis, he referenced Italian Renaissance painter Giotto’s medieval fresco cycles—especially those in Assisi, in a nod to the saint name the Pope took. To lie in state, Francis was dressed in an Atelier Lavs-designed white and gold mitre and simple robes. His wooden coffin was even more spare, sitting solemnly in the open piazza.
There are specific dressing requirements asked by the Vatican for such events. Men are expected to wear a dark suit, a long black tie. White shirts under jackets were permitted, but socks, shoes, coats, and umbrellas were also to be black. For women attending, they were asked to wear long black dresses, black mantilla (which is a lace veil), and black gloves if they wished. The only appropriate jewelry was a string of pearls.
Delegations in attendance kept to the respectful sartorial codes for funerals: black suits, funeral veils, pearls. Trump, however, wore a deep navy suit, white shirt, and navy tie (with an American flag pinned to his lapel), as did Joe Biden. Zelensky, Starmer, and Macron opted for black suits. Zelensky did not wear a tie and instead of a suit jacket wore a utility style jacket.
