Benedict XVI funeral expected to draw big crowds to St Peter’s Square

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An estimated 100,000 Catholics have descended on St Peter’s Square for the funeral of the former pope Benedict XVI.

Benedict died on Saturday, aged 95, almost a decade after becoming the first pope in 600 years to resign. He will become the first former pontiff in the modern history of the Catholic church to be buried by an incumbent pope, Francis, who arrived outside St Peter’s Basilica in a wheelchair on Thursday.

“This is a very important moment, especially as we are seeing one pope bury another,” said Vanessa Rivas, from Spain and in Rome on holiday with her husband, George. “We were here and wanted to come, also to try to understand how the Catholic church might develop after this.”

Rachel Alomso, also from Spain but living in Rome, was among those who filed into the square before 7am. The 35-year-old described herself as a “devoted Catholic”.

“Benedict was a very important pope who did many things, the fruit of which we might not realise for several years,” she said. “He always took on his tasks with humility, even when he realised he had to resign because he didn’t have the strength to continue as pope.”

The number of Catholics paying tribute in St Peter’s Basilica, where his body lay in state for three days before the funeral, has beaten the expectations of Vatican officials. More than 135,000 people flocked to the Vatican in the days before the ceremony.

During his weekly papal audience on Wednesday, Pope Francis hailed his immediate predecessor, a conservative thinker, as “a great master of catechesis”.

Benedict led the Catholic church for eight years before resigning in 2013, citing a decline in his health. He chose to be called pope emeritus after his abdication, instead of reverting to Joseph Ratzinger, and continued to live in the Vatican and to wear a white cassock.

He will be given a funeral similar to that of a reigning pontiff and will be laid to rest in the tomb where Pope John Paul II was buried before beatification.

After the funeral in St Peter’s Square, Benedict’s remains – carried in a cypress coffin – will be placed inside a zinc one, and then finally into another made from oak.

He will be buried with coins and medals minted during his time as pope, the palliums he wore as part of his robes and a metal cylinder containing a rogito – a text describing his papacy.

Only two countries – Italy and Benedict’s native Germany – were invited to send official state delegations to the funeral, but other national leaders and royals will attend in private capacities.

Despite being in the background for the past decade, Benedict came forward on a variety of issues, often clashing with the views of the more liberal-minded Francis.

Among those paying their respects at St Peter’s Basilica have been hardline conservative leaders, including the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orb?n, and his Polish counterpart, Mateusz Morawiecki.

“There have been so many [popes],” said Marco Tosatti, a Vatican journalist. “He [Benedict] had a big impact and was loved by many people, as much as he was hated by the newspapers.”

In one of his most controversial essays, published in 2019, Benedict blamed the church’s sexual abuse scandals on the sexual revolution of the 1960s and “homosexual cliques” among priests. His opinion came two months after an unprecedented Vatican summit on tackling clerical sexual abuse, and sharply contrasted with that of Pope Francis, who blamed the scandals on a clerical culture that elevated priests above the laity.

The results of a German investigation published last January said Benedict had failed to act against four priests accused of child sexual abuse during his time as archbishop of Munich and Freising.