The funeral Mass of Pope Francis will be celebrated 26 April in St Peter’s Square, the Vatican announced.
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, dean of the College of Cardinals, will preside over the liturgy, which begins a nine-day period of official mourning and daily memorial Masses.
The deceased pope’s body, which was taken to the chapel of his residence late 21 April, the day of his death, will be carried into St Peter’s Basilica for public viewing and prayer early 23 April.
The public viewing was scheduled to end late 25 April with another prayer service to close the coffin.
The rites and rituals for dressing the body, moving it to St Peter’s Basilica and celebrating the funeral are published in the Ordo Exsequiarum Romani Pontificis (“Funeral Rites of the Roman Pontiff”).
The rites originally were approved by St John Paul II in 1998 but were released only when he died in 2005. Modified versions of the rites were used after Pope Benedict XVI died 31 December, 2022, and Pope Francis revised and simplified them in 2024.
US Cardinal Kevin J Farrell, the chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church, presided over a prayer service for the formal verification of the pope’s death 21 April in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, where Pope Francis celebrated an early morning Mass most days before his final illness.
Cardinal Farrell will lead the prayerful procession to take the pope’s body, already in its coffin, from the chapel, into St Peter’s Square and then into the basilica.
According to the book of rites, he will say, “Dearest brothers and sisters, with great emotion we accompany the mortal remains of our Pope Francis into the Vatican basilica where he often exercised his ministry as the bishop of the church that is in Rome and as pastor of the universal church.”
For more coverage on the death of Pope Francis:
- Cause of Death
- Place of burial
- Canonisation postponed
- What happens next?
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