Prelude to a Funeral

The rituals of the Vatican can seem timeless, impervious to change. But look closer.

The Swiss Guards accompanying Pope Francis on his final journey still wear the colors of the Medici family, 420 years after the last Medici pope.

But the coffin has changed. The one for Francis is far plainer than the nested trio long used by popes — a simplification ordered by Francis himself.

Francis set the stage for his own mourning late last year, when he approved a simplified procedure for papal funeral rituals.

Simplicity, of course, is relative — in this case to the breathtaking grandeur bequeathed by centuries of Roman Catholic tradition.

The procession took place Wednesday morning, when Francis’ coffin was carried from the Casa Santa Marta, the cardinals’ guesthouse where he lived instead of the regal papal apartments, to St. Peter’s Basilica, where his body is to spend three days lying in state.

The pope’s remains will lie below the basilica’s 380-foot-high Renaissance dome, with its gilding and its gorgeous mosaics, in front of the bronze canopy that Gian Lorenzo Bernini made to embellish its high altar.

But it rests there on a low pedestal, not a bier. And the plans omitted a private viewing at the Apostolic Palace for cardinals and other dignitaries, though the coffin did spend a period for quiet farewells in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta.

Nor will St. Peter’s be the final stop. Francis asked to be buried at the Papal Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, where he prayed before and after every journey of his papacy. His will specifies a simple tomb, “in the earth,” with a single-word inscription: “Franciscus.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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