Pope Francis led the funeral of his predecessor Benedict XVI on Thursday in front of tens of thousands of mourners in St Peter's Square, an event unprecedented in modern times.
Scarlet-clad cardinals, dignitaries and thousands of priests and nuns from around the world gathered to say goodbye to the German theologian, who stunned the Catholic church in 2013 by becoming the first pontiff in six centuries to resign.
At the end of the service, Francis made the sign of the cross over Benedict's simple cypress wood coffin and bowed his head, before pallbearers carried it into St Peter's Basilica. Coins and medals minted during his papacy and a written text describing his pontificate, sealed in a metal cylinder, were placed alongside his body.Born Joseph Ratzinger, the ex-pope had not been a head of state for a decade, but world leaders including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni were among those in attendance.
"Benedict is a bit like my father, so I had to pay homage to him," said Cristina Grisanti, a 59-year-old from Milan, who hailed the former pope's"purity, his candour, his mildness". His eight years as head of the worldwide Catholic Church was also marked by crises, from in-fighting within the Vatican to the global scandal of clerical sex abuse and its cover-up.
He and Francis, an Argentine Jesuit, were said to get on well, but Benedict's later interventions meant he stayed a standard-bearer for conservative Catholics who did not like his successor's more liberal stance.
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