While millions of Catholics mourn the loss of Pope Francis, attention will also turn to the pontiff's funeral and how mourners can pay their respects. Senior Vatican official Cardinal Kevin Farrell announced Francis's death, aged 88, in a statement on Easter Monday (April 21).
Francis asked that a number of ceremonial elements be set aside for his funeral. Traditionally, a papal funeral is a complex, elaborate event, but Francis approved changes to simplify the procedure. Francis will be buried in a plain wooden coffin lined with zinc, unlike the previous three nested coffins made of cypress, lead, and oak.
The pontiff's body will not be raised on a catafalque in St Peter's Basilica for mourners to view in a further break with tradition.
They will still be able to pay their respects to Pope Francis, whose body will remain in the coffin with the lid removed.
It will be a simpler funeral than that staged after the death of Pope John Paul II. But it will still be a major event as millions of Catholics will want to mourn Francis and reflect on his papacy.
Francis will also be the first pope in over 100 years to be buried outside the Vatican. He will be laid to rest in the Basilica of St Mary Major, one of four papal basilicas in Rome.
Born to Italian immigrants in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Francis was the eldest of five children. He was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1969 and led the religious order in Argentina during the country’s murderous dictatorship from 1976-83.
Francis became archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998 and elevated to cardinal in 2001 by Pope John Paul II. He was elected the 266th pope on March 13, 2013, on the fifth ballot.
He was the first pope from the Americas, the first from the Jesuit order and the first to take the name of Francis, after St Francis of Assisi, the 13th century saint known for personal simplicity.
As Buenos Aires archbishop, Francis denied himself the luxuries his predecessors enjoyed, travelling by bus, cooking his own meals and regularly visiting slums.
That simplicity continued as Pope. He lived in the Vatican hotel instead of the Apostolic Palace, wore his old orthotic shoes and not the red loafers of the papacy, and set an example to the clerical classes by using compact cars.
One of his priorities as pope was to advocate for migrants. His first trip outside Rome in 2013 was to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa where he met with newly arrived migrants.
He denounced the "globalisation of indifference" shown to would-be refugees and prayed for dead migrants at the US-Mexico border in 2016. Francis also brought 12 Syrian Muslims to Rome on his plane after visiting a refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece.
Early in his papacy, Francis signalled a more welcoming stance toward LGBTQ+ people, declaring, "Who am I to judge?", when asked about a gay priest.
In 2015, his environmental manifesto Praised Be, urged a cultural revolution to correct what he called the "structurally perverse" global economic system which he said exploited the poor and turned Earth into "an immense pile of filth".
The greatest scandal of his papacy came in 2018 when he discredited Chilean victims of sexual abuse by siding with a bishop whom they accused of complicity. Realising his error, he invited them to the Vatican and apologised in person.
Francis suffered from chronic lung disease and had part of a lung removed as a young man. He was admitted to Gemelli Hospital on February 14 for a respiratory crisis, which developed into double pneumonia. He spent 38 days there, the longest hospitalisation of his 12-year papacy.
But he emerged on Easter Sunday — his last public appearance, a day before his death — to bless thousands of people in St Peter’s Square and treat them to a surprise popemobile romp through the piazza, drawing wild cheers and applause.
