Key events
Meanwhile, the ceremony inside St Peter’s Basilica is now over, with cardinals lining up to pay their respects at pope’s coffin first.
Jakub Krupa
I will bring you more updates from Angela in Rome later during the day, as she sets off to speak with pilgrims queueing to pay their final respects to Pope Francis.
Angela Giuffrida
It’s still hard to digest that Pope Francis is no longer with us, especially as just a few days ago, he was sitting on the balcony, waving to the crowd during the Easter Sunday mass, and he had been out and about a lot in the weeks leading to his death.
And although we were expecting it, because he was getting over a severe illness and was very ill, we didn’t expect it to happen so soon.
The general atmosphere is quite solemn, with hymns being sung in Latin, repeating the call to “pray for us,” which was always the final thing whenever the pope communicated or said anything. He would say, “Please don’t forget to pray for me.”
There are big crowds in the square and people would have been waiting since about 7 am this morning.
As part of the procession, we saw dozens of cardinals walking in front, alongside and behind the coffin, flanked by the Swiss guards solemnly lined up outside the Basilica.
What was unexpected was that the coffin was open. We don’t know who decided that, whether the pope made that decision himself.
I was just talking to a Spanish Vatican reporter – Jordi Barcia Antelo, Vatican correspondent for the Spanish national radio, RNE – and he said it was most likely the pope who made that decision and that it was his final way of showing he was close to the people; he didn’t want to be hidden away. But that’s a surprise this morning.
Let’s briefly turn to our Rome correspondent Angela Giuffrida, watching the ceremony from the rooftop above St Peter’s Square.
The coffin has now entered St Peter’s Basilica.
Crowds break into applause as coffin moves across St Peter’s Square
The crowds gathered in St Peter’s Square break into applause, as the coffin with Pope Francis’s body is carried through the square on its way into the Basilica.
The procession has just entered St Peter’s Square.
The coffin makes it way through the Vatican towards St Peter’s Basilica, accompanied by the choir’s singing, starting with Psalm 22.
You can follow the ceremony live watching the stream at the top of the blog.
After a brief ceremony inside the Santa Maria chapel, the coffin is now being moved to St Peter’s Basilica, as the bells toll for Pope Francis.
Camerlengo Kevin Farrell leads the prayer:
Dear brothers and sisters, with deep sorrow, we now accompany the mortal remains of our Pope Francis to the Vatican Basilica, where he often exercised his ministry as Bishop of the Church which is in Rome and as Pastor of the universal Church.
As we now leave this home, let us thank the Lord for the countless gifts that he bestowed on the Christian people through his servant, Pope Francis.
Let us ask him, in his mercy and kindness, to grant the late Pope an eternal home in the kingdom of heaven, and to comfort with celestial hope the papal family, the Church in Rome and the faithful throughout the world.
Look kindly, Lord, on the life and works of your servant, our Pope Francis. Welcome him into the dwelling of perpetual light and peace and grant that your faithful people may follow fervently in his footsteps, bearing witness to the Gospel of Jesus, who lives and reigns for ever and ever.
If you want to closely follow the order of the ceremony, here are all the texts of prayers.
Ceremony gets under way
The ceremony of “translation”, moving the body from the Santa Maria chapel to St Peter’s Basilica, is starting now and is led by camerlengo, or chamberlain, Kevin Farrell.
It is Farrell who announced the death of Pope Francis on Monday.
He rose through the ecclesiastical ranks to be made camerlengo by Pope Francis, whose death has thrust him into the global spotlight.
Or, as the British tabloid Metro put it: “Interim pope is a bloke called Kevin from Dublin.”
Here is his profile:
Austen Ivereigh, biographer of Pope Francis, has been speaking to BBC News in the last few minutes noting that “what’s remarkable about what’s happening in these days is that we have the funeral of the pope in Easter Week.”
“This is incredibly unusual. I don’t know whether it’s ever happened before, because Easter week is all about celebrating the resurrection, and it’s also about the birth in the readings of the church … so there’s something actually very, very powerful and very fitting about burying, grieving, saying goodbye to the pope in this week,” he said.
Ivereigh, who saw Pope Francis’s body in the Santa Maria chapel last night, said it was “hard, but it was good to accept that he is gone, and that is what really these ceremonies, what we are going through these days are about: accepting that a death has happened and coming to terms with it.”
“For Catholics, this is an important part of … allowing ourselves to grieve, but also to believe that this is not the end,” he said.
First security details emerge ahead of funeral
In the meantime, first details are emerging as to the scale of the logistics operation required for this Saturday’s funeral, with over 170 foreign delegations and around 200,000 faithful expected to come to the Vatican.
The timing of the funeral coincides with the Italian bank holiday, the Liberation Day, which falls on Friday and will see muted celebrations this year due to the national mourning.
Corriere della Serra is reporting that some of the most advanced defence and security mechanisms will be used to protect the faithful on Sunday, with elaborate jamming technologies, a no-fly zone over the city with enhanced air force monitoring in place, and heightened anti-terrorism alert measures.
The police is also working out how to provide necessary support to all foreign delegations, and on top of that preparing for a hypothetical scenario in which an Italian cardinal gets picked as the new pope, which they expect would prompt more Italian faithful to descend on Rome.
Faithful begin to arrive for ceremony
Morning opening: Lying in state
Jakub Krupa
Pope Francis’s body will be moved to St Peter’s Basilica on Wednesday morning where it will lie in state for three days to allow Catholic faithful to pay their final respects ahead of a funeral expected to bring a host of world leaders including Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump.
The ceremony is scheduled to start 9am Rome (8am BST), and will see Francis’s body leave the Santa Maria residence where he lived and move in a procession into St Peter’s Basilica, entering through the main entrance.
The body will lie in state until Friday 7pm local time, when the public mourning will end in preparation for the funeral on Saturday morning.
I will follow the ceremony and the latest reports from the Vatican and elsewhere for you.
It’s Wednesday, 23 April 2025, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live.
Good morning.