Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has been laid to rest in the crypt beneath St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican following a funeral Mass on Thursday morning.
The Mass was celebrated by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Dean of the Vatican’s College of Cardinals. Pope Francis officiated and delivered the sermon.
Among the tens of thousands in attendance were Irish Ambassador to the Holy See Frances Collins, Catholic Primate of All Ireland Archbishop Eamon Martin and Archbishop of Dublin Dermot Farrell. Former Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin also attended.
Meanwhile, President Michael D Higgins, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Green Party leader Eamon Ryan attended a Requiem Mass in Dublin’s Pro Cathedral for Pope Benedict XVI. The celebrant was retired Dublin Auxiliary Bishop Eamonn Walsh.
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Leading secular figures at Pope Benedict’s funeral were both German president Frank Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Olaf Scholz, , recognising that Benedict was the first German pope in over 500 years, as well as Italian president Sergio Mattarella and prime minister Giorgia Meloni in acknowledgement of Benedict’s service as Bishop of Rome, as is every pope.
In advance of the funeral, the Vatican had said that the presence of other official delegations was not envisaged.
However, the attendance included Queen Sofia of Spain, mother of King Felipe, as well as King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of Belgium. The UK was represented by Education Secretary Gillian Keegan as well as Cardinal Vincent Nichols, president of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.
Heads of state from Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, San Marino, Slovenia, Togo and Hungary were expected to attended as did representatives of other Christian denominations and of the Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist faiths..
With 125 cardinals in place to one side of the altar, the funeral for the 265th pope was told by Pope Francis, in reference to Benedict: “We pray that having served as the vicar of your son on earth, he may be welcomed by him into eternal glory.”
Before the Mass began in a foggy Rome bells slowly tolled and 12 white-gloved pallbearers brought the cypress coffin containing the late pope’s remains into St Peter’s Square, placing it on a platform in front of the altar. Monsignor Diego Ravelli and Archbishop Georg Gänswein, Benedict’s personal secretary, placed the Book of the Gospels on top of the casket.
Archbishop Gänswein kissed the casket before walking away.
The second reading at the funeral Mass was by Mary Maguire from the Raphoe Cathedral parish in Letterkenny, Co Donegal, where she does extensive work with the St Vincent de Paul Society. It is understood this was arranged through Msgr Kevin Gillespie, currently administrator in Letterkenny, who formerly worked at the Congregation for Clergy in the Vatican where he also acted as master of ceremonies for Pope Benedict.
Msgr Gillespie said he had been contacted by the funeral organisers who were looking for an English speaker to do a reading “and I thought of Mary who, as you saw, is a good reader. She and her husband Kieran run the St Vincent de Paul hostel in Letterkenny and are very active in the parish”.
Ms Maguire’s choice as reader at the funeral may have been “somewhat accidental but it was a great blessing,” he said.
Earlier, placed in the coffin along with Benedict’s body were coins and medals from his pontificate and a text describing his eight years leading the church from 2005 to 2013.
Benedict died on Saturday morning, New Year’s Eve, in the Vatican’s Mater Ecclesiae Monastery where he had resided since he resigned as pope and Vatican head of state in February 2013. His remains had been lying in state since Monday last.
After the Mass, Benedict’s cypress coffin was placed inside a zinc one, then an outer oak casket before being entombed in the crypt in the grottos underneath the basilica which once held the remains of Pope John Paul II before his beatification by Pope Benedict in 2011, when the former’s remains were removed to an altar in St Peter’s Basilica.
Some 200,000 paid tribute to Benedict during three days of public viewing in St Peter’s Basilica, with one of the last ones Friar Rosario Vitale, who spent an hour praying by his body.
He said Benedict had given him a special dispensation to begin the process of becoming a priest, which was required because of a physical disability.
“So today I came here to pray on his tomb, on his body and to say ‘thank you’ for my future priesthood, for my ministry,” he said. “I owe him a lot and this for me was really a gift to be able to pray for an hour on his bier.”
The former Joseph Ratzinger is considered one of the 20th century’s greatest theologians and spent his lifetime upholding church doctrine.
But he will go down in history for a singular, revolutionary act that changed the future of the papacy: He retired, the first pope in six centuries to do so.
Francis has praised Benedict’s courage in stepping aside when he believed he no longer had the strength to lead the church, saying it “opened the door” to other popes doing the same. Francis, for his part, recently said he has already left written instructions outlining the conditions in which he too would resign if he were to become incapacitated.
Benedict never intended his retirement to last as long as it did — at nearly 10 years it was longer than his eight-year pontificate.
And the unprecedented situation of a retired pope living alongside a reigning one prompted calls for protocols to guide future popes emeritus to prevent any confusion about who is really in charge.
During St John Paul II’s quarter-century as pope, the former Joseph Ratzinger spearheaded a crackdown on dissent as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, taking action against the left-leaning liberation theology that spread in Latin America in the 1970s and against dissenting theologians and nuns who did not toe the Vatican’s hard line on matters like sexual morals.
His legacy was marred by the clergy sexual abuse scandal, even though he recognised earlier than most the “filth” of priests who raped children, and actually laid the groundwork for the Holy See to punish them.
As cardinal and pope, he passed sweeping church legislation that resulted in 848 priests being defrocked from 2004-2014, roughly his pontificate with a year on either end.
But abuse survivors still held him responsible for the crisis, for failing to sanction any bishop who moved abusers around and identifying him as embodying the clerical system that long protected the institution over victims.
“Any celebration that marks the life of abuse enablers like Benedict must end,” said the main US survivor group SNAP. - Additional Reporting: AP
