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Vatican City: Even with the gravity of death in the air, it’s hard not to marvel at Michelangelo’s dome, an impossible structure suspended above us like the sky itself had been poured into stone.
But today, it wasn’t the art or the grandeur of St Peter’s Basilica that held us. It was the man lying beneath it all.
Thousands of people wait before St Peter’s Basilica to see the Pope lying in state on Thursday.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone
Pope Francis, in death, looked exactly as he had tried to live – unadorned. There was no papal crown, no golden thread. Just a red chasuble, his white cassock, and the gentle crossing of his hands on his chest. His face was slackened by time, but unmistakably him.
The man who spoke of climate change as a moral crisis. The man who washed the feet of prisoners. The man who dared, within the great machinery of the Catholic Church, to simply ask for kindness.
More than 90,000 people had passed through by Thursday evening, the Vatican said, a day-and-a-half after the doors first opened. The basilica stayed open through the night on Wednesday to accommodate them, closing only briefly on Thursday morning, and was to stay open through the night on Thursday as long as mourners keep coming.
Inside at nearly 5pm, light spills in through the high windows, dancing across golden mosaics and ancient marble. This is a place built to humble, and it succeeds.
People wait to see the pope lying in state inside St Peter’s Basilica.Credit:
A group of priests to my left knelt, their voices rising in low, rhythmic Latin, a prayer murmured in chorus, swallowed by the enormity of the basilica. It was beautiful, unsettling even. They prayed with the intimacy of brothers and the urgency of men who knew they were saying goodbye to a spiritual father.
Behind them, the rest of us shuffled forward, tourists in Birkenstocks, nuns in stiff habits, diplomats in tailored coats. Some clutched rosary beads; others held their children’s hands. Many wept. A few simply stared, lips parted, stunned into silence not just by the loss, but by the totality of it, that a man so present in our global consciousness could now be so still.
All the while, phones were everywhere. Held aloft like digital candles, their blue light flickered across faces, some reverent, others blank. Photos snapped, videos rolled.
I watched one man adjust his frame over and over, inching sideways for the best angle, as if this were a concert and not a farewell. You wanted to ask them, isn’t this enough? Isn’t the moment, the silence, the stillness of it all enough without needing to trap it behind a screen you’ll almost certainly never revisit?
People use their phones to capture the moment on Wednesday.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone
But maybe that’s modern grief. Someone once told me to record is to reckon. To post is to process.
Still, there was something jarring in it. Francis, who shunned spectacle, who asked us to turn our attention outward rather than inward, now becoming part of the endless scroll.
After the outrage of the first day, when people held phones aloft within metres of the Pope’s body, guards are now instructing mourners to put them away. They threaten to confiscate devices if disobeyed. Shame they didn’t bag them at front the door altogether.
But at least as the faithful now reach the front of the queue, they are viewing Francis in quiet dignity. The phones come down. The eyes come up.
More than 90,000 ppeople had paid their respects at the basilica by Thursday evening.Credit: Getty Images
It’s hard not to think about legacy in this place. Every inch of the basilica is a monument to what came before. Popes don’t die quietly here. They are buried into the bedrock of history, enshrined alongside the saints and emperors they outlived. But Francis? He always seemed slightly uncomfortable with that inevitability. He preferred the streets of Buenos Aires to the marble halls of Rome. He made phone calls himself, answered letters. He reminded us, often and insistently, that the church must be a field hospital, not a fortress.
Still, in these final hours, the ancient rituals took over. The Swiss Guard stood watch, unblinking in their solemnity. Cardinals moved with practised reverence. Somewhere, the gears of conclave preparation had already begun to turn. But here in this moment, before politics resumed, there was something purer. A breath held.
As I stand in line for a glimpse, I find myself next to Anderson Cooper from CNN. The two of us, waiting like everyone else. One from a humble town in country Victoria, the other earning $20 million a year as the face of a TV news network. And there we were, lined up, hushed, made to wait. It was a strange kind of democracy. Everyone equal before God.
Having seen what I came for, one feels compelled to move along before too long and let someone else have their moment. Some queued for more than three hours. Some came overnight. Some came without sleep. The world was still filing in to say goodbye.
And all the while, that incredible ceiling looked down. Still standing. Still listening.
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