VATICAN CITY – The Vatican is grieving the first head of the Catholic Church from the Americas.
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re was set to preside over Pope Francis’s funeral service at St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City before burial at the Basilica Papale Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.
“I wish my last earthly journey to end at this very ancient Marian shrine where I would go to pray at the beginning and end of each apostolic journey,” the pope wrote.
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Instead of a group of dignitaries, the pope asked for a group of people in need to give him a final farewell when the funeral procession ends at the Basilica Papale Santa Maria Maggiore.
As the first Jesuit pope in the history of the church, Pope Francis planned to have a simple tomb made out of marble from Liguria, in northern Italy, where his great-grandfather was born, according to the Vatican.
The historic farewell marks the beginning of the Vatican’s Novendiales, nine days of mourning on the fifth day of national mourning in Italy.
On Friday, after a three-day public viewing, Irish-American Cardinal Camerlengo Kevin Farrell presided over a private ceremony at St. Peter’s Basilica to seal the pope’s wooden coffin after placing a white silk veil and the lid on a zinc coffin.
On Monday, the Holy See’s press office reported the pope died of a stroke followed by a coma and heart failure at Domus Sanctae Marthae, the guest house where he lived after a papal conclave elected him on March 13, 2013. He was 88.
The pope, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, had been away from the guest house from Feb. 14 to March 23 while doctors treated him at the Agostino Gemelli University Policlinic in Rome.
The Holy See reported the pope had recovered from bronchitis that devolved into bilateral pneumonia. For decades, he was more susceptible to respiratory illnesses after a surgeon in Argentina removed part of one lung to treat an infection in 1957.
Before the priesthood, the son of Italian migrants studied to become a chemical technician. He was accepted to the seminary and earned degrees in humanities, philosophy, and theology before his ordination in 1969.
As a priest, he was Provincial of the Jesuits in Argentina from 1973 to 1979. Three of those years were during Argentina’s Dirty War, as the military dictatorship used violence against critics and detained and tortured Revs. Orlando Yorio and Franz Jalics, two Jesuits, over their work in the slums of Buenos Aires.
Despite allegations that he had failed to protect the Jesuit priests, Pope John Paul II appointed him Bishop of Auca and Auxiliary of Buenos Aires in 1992 and Cardinal in 2001. He served as The Archbishop of Buenos Aires from 1998 until he moved to the Vatican to reshape the church during his 12-year papacy.
“Francis has broken every rule; he has changed everything,” said Rev. Fabian Marquez, a priest from Texas who was visiting Vatican City.
The pope also defied ultra-conservative Catholics when he encouraged the church to be more welcoming of Catholic divorcees and same-sex couples. He regularly promoted women in the church. Most recently, weeks before his death, he promoted Sister Raffaella Petrini to serve as Vatican City State president.
The pope also denounced the “globalization of indifference” that he said resulted in the many indignities that the world’s migrants and refugees faced and was not afraid to make strong statements against war -- even though he didn’t repudiate the Catholic doctrine of a “just war.”
At every turn, for years, Francis rejected the pomp and privilege that had defined papal supremacy for centuries. In his autobiography, he wrote that he should be buried “with dignity, but like any Christian, because the bishop of Rome is a pastor and a disciple, not a powerful man of this world.”
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Torres contributed to this report from Miami.