More than 90,000 people have passed by the simple wooden coffin on the main altar of St Peter’s Basilica holding the body of Pope Francis, to pray, smile, mourn and pay their respects ahead of the papal funeral on Saturday morning.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols, President of the Bishops’ Conference, arrived in Rome on Tuesday having presided at a Requiem Mass on Easter Monday evening inside a packed Westminster Cathedral.
Speaking to us from Rome on his third day in the city, Cardinal Nichols acknowledged that it had taken some time to process his own thoughts and emotions after the death of the Pope:
“There hasn’t been much time in which to be still, and to be quiet and to discover and touch those things. Probably the two best occasions have been times I’ve been able to go in and just stay quietly with the body of Pope Francis in the Basilica.
“So that was Wednesday afternoon. And again on Thursday, before our meetings began. I went a bit early and was there for half an hour… Mourning is about a deep sense of loss, but it’s also about trying to understand the ways in which the person who has died remains part of our life. That relationship changes. We have to get to the point of understanding the abiding presence of the body of Christ, in the communion of life in Christ. So life has changed, not ended, as we say at the funeral rites.”
The translation of the body of Pope Francis from Santa Marta to St Peter’s Basilica also made a deep impression on the Cardinal:
“In all the times I’ve ever been in Rome, and at Roman ceremonies, the procession bringing the body of Pope Francis from Santa Marta to the Basilica of St Peter’s is the most touching, the most moving, the most remarkable event I’ve ever been to – precisely because it brought a very profound sense of loss and mourning into a very public sphere with beauty and dignity. And not just from the people who are carrying or escorting the Pope’s body, for the whole crowd of people in the Piazza. It was just extraordinary.”
For the Cardinal, what we have seen in recent days has, in some ways, echoed the human touch of one of Pope Francis’ predecessors:
“It’s very reminiscent of Pope St John Paul II. I remember talking to people when he died, and so many people said, he came to see us, now we’ve come to see him. So there was something very reciprocal. This wasn’t a figure of a distant leader. This was a memory of someone who had touched their lives.
“A friend of mine said the other day, Pope Francis helps us to understand that God’s forgiveness is a caress, not a decree… To me, the most important document he wrote was the last one, Dilexit nos, ‘God Loves Us’. He used that wonderful phrase. You have to learn, I have to learn, that my name is written on the heart of Jesus. Okay, I might want Jesus’s name to be imprinted on my heart, but I have to understand that my name is written on his heart, and that changes everything.”
As many as one million people are said to be planning to be in or around Rome for the funeral of Pope Francis. How would Cardinal Nichols focus the prayers of millions of UK Catholics as we watch on through our TV screens and devices?
“Remember a Requiem Mass for a member of your own family. Essentially, it’s not different. Think of that great procession on Wednesday morning. It was exactly the same format as for somebody’s granddad. A boy carried the cross at the front, the priest came next, then the body of the person who died, then the family behind the coffin. Holy water was used, incense was used, the prayers were said – exactly the same as will be said for the Pope on a bigger scale.
“So when anybody joins in with this funeral Mass, let it remind them of a family funeral that they’ve already experienced, because basically it’s the same. It’s the same entrusting of the soul of a person – of their whole being – into the mercy of God. It’s knowing that in the communion of the Church, they’re still with us.”
Now is not the time to jump too far ahead, but, as a final question, we asked how Cardinal Nichols felt knowing that he would play a part in electing the 267th Pope:
“Well, I feel a bit intimidated, actually. I know myself fairly well, and I know I get anxious about things. But I have to put alongside those feelings that this is God’s work. I’m sure we’ll get the prompts if we’re attentive to them… As Pope John XXIII wrote in his diary when he was going to sleep at night, he’d say, ‘Right, Lord, I’m going to sleep. It’s your Church. You look after it.’ There’s got to be an element of that combined with, I think, a quite proper level of anxiety that we do this well.”
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