World leaders and thousands of Catholic faithful on Saturday paid a final farewell to Pope Francis, as body leaves St. Peter’s Square enroute his final journey to Saint Mary Major, where the burial will take place.
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, in his homily said Francis Papacy was driven by the conviction that the Church is a home for all with a door that is always open to all.
“A Church capable of bending down to every person, regardless of their beliefs or condition, and healing their wounds.”
The 91-year-old Cardinal presided over the funeral service and delivered the final commendation and valediction, entrusting the pope’s soul to God.
In 2020, Francis approved his election as dean of the College of Cardinals.
Re was previously the Holy See’s representative in Panama and later in Iran, before returning to the Vatican at the Secretariat of State, where he remained for 28 years.
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The homily eulogised Francis as a pontiff who knew how to communicate to the “least among us” with an informal, spontaneous style.
According to Re, Francis was “a pope among the people, with an open heart towards everyone.”
He recalled the last image many people have of Francis was of him delivering what would become his final blessing on Easter Sunday, and saluting from the popemobile in the same piazza where his funeral was being celebrated.
He also said Pope Francis’s efforts to help refugees, migrants and poor people were countless.
“His gestures and exhortations in favour of refugees and displaced persons are countless,” Cardinal Re said in front of thousands of guests, including Trump, with whom Francis had clashed over the treatment of migrants.
The presiding Cardinal stated that the late pontiff urged reason and honest negotiation in efforts to end conflicts around the world.
“Faced with the raging wars of recent years, with their inhuman horrors and countless deaths and destruction, Pope Francis incessantly raised his voice imploring peace and calling for reason and honest negotiation to find possible solutions,” Cardinal Re said in his homily at the funeral.
