Benedict XVI, the first pope in nearly 600 years to resign, was laid to rest Thursday at a simple but rare requiem Mass for a dead pope presided over by a living one.
Bells tolled and the crowd applauded as pallbearers carried Benedict’s cypress coffin out of the fog-shrouded St. Peter’s Basilica and placed it before the altar in the square outside.
Wearing the crimson vestments typical of papal funerals, Pope Francis opened the service with a prayer and closed it by solemnly blessing the simple casket — decorated only with the former pope’s coat of arms — in keeping with the wishes of the pope emeritus.
In between, Francis made only fleeting reference to Benedict in his homily, offering a meditation on Christ instead of a eulogy of his predecessor's legacy before the casket was sealed and entombed in the basilica grotto.
“If you remember when Pope John Paul II died, the last Bishop of Rome to have died, Benedict who was then Cardinal Joseph Ratinger, did speak a lot about the legacy of John Paul. But the one thing I’ve learned about Pope Francis is that he is really a pastor at heart,” said Fr. Tom Willis, the director of Liturgy for the Diocese of St Augustine and pastor of St. Mark the Evangelist Mission. “And so the rituals of the church tell a pastor you’re not to eulogize, you’re not to get off on those kinds of judgment homilies. So, he just took off right from the scripture readings and things that were proclaimed. He let that be stated as the church’s belief in prayer for Benedict.”
Heads of state and royalty, clergy from around the world and thousands of regular people flocked to the subdued ceremony, despite Benedict’s request for simplicity and official efforts to keep the first funeral for a pope emeritus in modern times low-key.
The former Joseph Ratzinger, who died Dec. 31 at age 95, 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, saying it “opened the door” for other popes to do the same.
Some 50,000 people attended Thursday's Mass, according to the Vatican, after around 200,000 paid their respects during three days of public viewing.
But the service was also significant for what it lacked: the feeling of uncertainty that would normally accompany the passing of a pope before a new one is elected. Instead, with Francis in place, Benedict’s death marked the end of a decade in which a reigning pope lived alongside a retired one.
“Benedict has been the bridge between John Paul and Francis,” said Alessandra Aprea, a 56-year-old from Meta di Sorrento near Naples. “We could not have Francis without him.”
Early Thursday the Vatican released the official history of Benedict's life, a short document in Latin that was placed in a metal cylinder in his coffin before it was sealed, along with the coins and medallions minted during his papacy and his pallium stoles.
The document gave ample attention to Benedict's historic resignation and referred to him as “pope emeritus,” citing verbatim the Latin words he uttered on Feb. 11, 2013, when he announced he would retire.
The document, known as a “rogito” or deed, also cited his theological and papal legacy, including his outreach to Anglicans and Jews and his efforts to combat clergy sexual abuse “continually calling the church to conversion, prayer, penance and purification.”
Francis didn’t mention Benedict’s specific legacy in his homily and only uttered his name once, in the final line, delivering instead a meditation on Jesus’ willingness to entrust himself to God’s will.
“Holding fast to the Lord’s last words and to the witness of his entire life, we too, as an ecclesial community, want to follow in his steps and to commend our brother into the hands of the Father,” Francis said.
During St. John Paul II’s quarter-century as pope, 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 didn’t toe the Vatican’s hard line on matters like sexual morals.
His legacy was marred by the clergy sexual abuse crisis, even though he recognized 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 to 2014, roughly his pontificate with a year on either end. But abuse survivors still held him responsible, for failing to sanction any bishop who moved abusers around, refusing to mandate the reporting of sex crimes to police and identifying him as embodying the clerical system that long protected the institution over victims.
“His secretary spoke to that earlier this week, and one of the things he said was that we don’t have the privilege of what happened behind the scenes,” Willis said. “And certainly, like anybody, when news like this hits, you have to have that first reaction like, ‘What? This happened? Please tell me no.’ As he continued to have to lead the church’s effort .... he was really one of the strongest opponents to allowing the sexual abusers to have any kind of public face or ministry.”
Mike McDonnell of the U.S. abuse survivor group SNAP said while Benedict passed new canon laws, he could have done far more to influence John Paul to take firm action. Referring to Benedict's nickname as “God’s Rottweiler,” he said: "In our in our view, it was a dog bark without a bite. Certainly he could have done more.”
A group representing German clergy abuse survivors called on German officials attending Benedict’s funeral to demand more action from the Vatican on sexual abuse. Eckiger Tisch asked leaders to demand that Francis issue a “universal church law” stipulating zero tolerance in dealing with abuse by clergy.
The funeral ritual itself is modeled on the code used for dead popes but with some modifications given Benedict was not a reigning pontiff when he died.
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 grottoes underneath St. Peter’s Basilica that once held the John Paul's tomb before it was moved upstairs.
While Thursday's Mass was unusual, it does have some precedent: In 1802, Pope Pius VII presided over the funeral in St. Peter’s of his predecessor, Pius VI, who had died in exile in France in 1799 as a prisoner of Napoleon.
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Associated Press journalist Trisha Thomas contributed.
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