Even before Saturday’s funeral service for Pope Francis at the Vatican, the leader known as “the People’s Pope” has already broken with some traditions in the ways pontiffs are laid to rest. His body has been lying in state for three days in St. Peter’s Basilica, where members of the public have been filing past to pay their respects.
Unlike his predecessors, who were buried in three nested coffins — one made of cypress, one made of lead, and one made of elm — the famously humble Francis chose to be buried in a simple wooden coffin.
That change came as part of recently updated funeral planning for pontiffs, published late last year and approved by Francis.
The updated Ordo Exsequiarum Romani Pontificis, as it’s called in Latin, also says that the public will be able to view the pope’s body in an open coffin.
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Another break from tradition is its direction that the ascertainment of the pope’s death should take place in a chapel, not his room.
“A second edition [of the official funeral rites for pontiffs] became necessary, first of all because Pope Francis has requested it, as he himself has stated on several occasions of the need to simplify and adapt certain rites so that the celebration of the funeral of the Bishop of Rome may better expresses [sic] the faith of the Church in the Risen Christ,” Archbishop Diego Ravelli, Master of Apostolic Ceremonies, said in a statement released by the Vatican at the time of the update.
Archbishop Ravelli also said “the renewed rite also needed to emphasise even more that the funeral of the Roman Pontiff is that of a pastor and disciple of Christ and not of a powerful person of this world.”
The other major break from papal funeral tradition is the place where Francis has chosen to be buried.
In his last will and testament, published shortly after his death, Francis requested that he be laid to rest outside the Vatican, in the Papal Basilica of St. Mary Major (Santa Maria Maggiore, in Italian). He often visited that ancient church in Rome to pray before and after his travels.
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Many popes are laid to rest inside the Vatican, in the Vatican grottoes, a system of vaults on the lower level of St. Peter’s Basilica. The church says seven popes in history have been buried at St. Mary Major, but Francis will be the first one in centuries.
“I wish that my last earthly journey conclude precisely in this ancient Marian sanctuary where I went for prayer at the beginning and end of each Apostolic journey to confidently entrust my intentions to the Immaculate Mother and thank Her for her docile and maternal care,” Francis said in his will.
“The tomb must be in the earth; simple, without particular decoration and with the only inscription: Franciscus,” he specified. That is also a departure from other popes whose tombs include an inscription honoring their papacy.