Pope Francis funeral: A visual guide and timeline

The funeral of Pope Francis will be simpler than those of previous popes, following instructions he set out himself.

But as a head of state and leader of more than a billion Catholics worldwide, it will still be a spectacle of ceremony and tradition.

His death has drawn famous figures, politicians, and thousands of followers to Vatican City to pay their respects.

Archbishops and bishops will start gathering at 08:30 local time (07:30 BST) in the Constantine Wing, a corridor adjacent to St Peter’s Basilica.

At the same time, Catholic priests will congregate in St Peter’s Square.

Half an hour later, at 09:00 local time, patriarchs from the Orthodox church and cardinals will congregate in Saint Sebastian Chapel, inside the basilica, where the remains of Pope John Paul II lie.

They will walk in a funeral procession accompanying the Pope’s coffin, which has spent the last four days in the centre of St Peter’s Basilica.

The funeral starts at 10:00 when the coffin is laid in the square in front of St Peter’s Basilica. The service will be led by the dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re.

​​Guests and dignitaries will be seated closer to the basilica and coffin, with thousands of other clergy and members of the public in and around St Peter’s Square, similar to the funeral for Pope Benedict XVI shown below.

The service will end with prayers for Pope Francis and a final commendation – a concluding prayer where the Pope will be formally entrusted to God.

This marks the beginning of a nine-day mourning period called Novemdiales with a mass held every day in his memory.

Officials expect at least 250,000 members of the public to attend the funeral and there are some 170 heads of state or government on the guestlist.

Prince William will represent King Charles III, continuing a precedent set in 2005 when the then-Prince of Wales attended Pope John Paul II’s funeral on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II.

There will also be hundreds of members of the clergy, with each group having a specific dress code for the service.

For bishops and archbishops, the liturgical clothes for a funeral include the alb, a white tunic held by a traditional cord called cincture, the amice, a short linen cloth to cover the neck, and a red chasuble, a solemn cape, in honour of the pope. Finally, they don a simple white linen or silk mitre on their heads.

Cardinals wear similar clothes, but they can be distinguished by their more ornate damask pattern mitres, which look cream rather than white.

Priests wear simpler garments and a long scarf over their tunic called a red stole.

The leaders, or patriarchs, of Orthodox churches will wear their own style of mitres, a cape called sakkos and an ornate cloth called omophorion, in colours according to their specific traditions.

After the service, Francis’s body — dressed in a red chasuble and a damask and golden papal mitre — will be transported to the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome for burial. He will become the first Pope since Leo XIII, who died in 1903, to be buried outside the Vatican.

Traditionally, the Pope’s remains would have been enclosed the day before the funeral in three nested coffins, made of cypress, lead, and oak.

The cypress coffin symbolised humility and mortality; the outer oak coffin, a sign of ‘dignity and strength’ and the lead coffin, welded to preserve the remains and prevent tampering.

Last year, however, Pope Francis requested that he be buried in a simpler wooden coffin with a zinc interior.

This is the coffin that will be seen in the funeral service.

According to Monsignor Diego Ravelli, the Vatican’s master of liturgical ceremonies, the request emphasised “even more that the Roman Pontiff’s funeral is that of a shepherd and disciple of Christ and not of a powerful man of this world”.

Pope Francis was a Jesuit – a Catholic religious order of priests known for their dedication to education and missionary work.

He was also a devotee of the Virgin Mary and as such, he chose to be buried in Santa Maria Maggiore, which sits outside the Vatican walls in the centre of Rome.

The church houses the Salus Populi Romani, a Byzantine icon of the Virgin believed to have been made by St Luke the Evangelist and used by Jesuit orders all over the world.

In his will, written in 2022, Pope Francis said: “Throughout my life, and during my ministry as a priest and bishop, I have always entrusted myself to the Mother of Our Lord, the Blessed Virgin Mary.”

“I wish my final earthly journey to end precisely in this ancient Marian sanctuary, where I would always stop to pray at the beginning and end of every Apostolic Journey, confidently entrusting my intentions to the Immaculate Mother, and giving thanks for her gentle and maternal care,” he wrote.

On his first day as Pope in 2013, Francis left the Vatican to pray in Santa Maria Maggiore.

Seven popes are buried in the same basilica in ornamented tombs, however, the Argentinian pontiff asked that his tomb would be in the side aisle, between the Pauline Chapel (Chapel of Salus Populi Romani) and the Sforza Chapel, close to a statue known as the Mary Regina Pacis (Mary, Queen of Peace).

“Near that Queen of Peace, to whom I have always turned for help and whose embrace I have sought more than a hundred times during my pontificate,” he explained in his will.

The Pope also asked that his tomb would be in the ground, simple and bearing only the inscription “Franciscus”, the Latin version of his chosen name.