CATHOLICS GATHER TO SAY GOODBYE AS POPE FRANCIS LIES IN STATE

CATHOLICS GATHER TO SAY GOODBYE AS POPE FRANCIS LIES IN STATE

Pope Francis’s body was transported to Saint Peter’s Basilica on Wednesday where he will lie in state before his funeral on Saturday. The late Pope’s open wooden coffin was carried by pallbearers for 500 metres from the Casa Santa Marta, where he lived and died.

Red-robed cardinals, priests, friars carrying candles and the Vatican’s Swiss Guards walked slowly into the vast esplanade as a male choir chanted psalms and prayers in Latin while the great bells of the basilica tolled.

The body of the 88-year-old Argentine pontiff was held aloft on a wooden platform by 14 white-gloved, black-suited pallbearers.

Pope Francis died two days ago in his rooms at the Santa Marta guesthouse, very near the Basilica, after suffering a stroke.

He had spent five weeks in hospital earlier this year to be treated for double pneumonia, and last appeared in public on Sunday, when he surprised pilgrims by being driven around the packed square in his white, open-topped popemobile.

Francis’s body had been held in the chapel of Santa Marta, where he lived during his 12-year papacy, but will now lie in state at the basilica until Saturday’s funeral.

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Francis’s coffin was placed before St Peter’s Altar of the Confession, where Bernini’s bronze baldacchino soars up towards Michelangelo’s famous dome.