The complexity of the transfer of Pope Francis’ coffin through the center of Rome, from St. Peter’s Vatican to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, where he will be buried, is the main concern for the Italian authorities, the head of Civil Protection, Fabio Ciciliano, acknowledged on Thursday.
That part of the device, which will take place on Saturday after the funeral, presents important logistical, infrastructure and security challenges, the official admitted at a press conference, in which he also said that the number of faithful who will pass through the burning chapel before, about 61,000, will increase in the coming hours.
On Saturday, after the funeral, his body will be taken in a vehicle in a solemn passage to the Roman basilica of Santa María La Mayor, to be buried in a chapel, as the Argentine pontiff arranged in life, which will collapse the center of the Italian capital.
“I remember that the burial ceremony will be a private ceremony, while immediately after the faithful will be given the opportunity to reach the side of their holiness, and obviously the sustained concentration of faithful must be taken into great consideration,” said Ciciliano.
The route of this funeral procession, which will extend over six kilometers, will be analyzed today in a meeting by those responsible for the organization, who are carrying out a “complete evaluation”.
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Ciciliano focused on the exceptional fact that Francisco’s death has coincided with the Jubilee year, and that this is also a time when Rome is usually full of tourists, so it is difficult to estimate the number of people who will attend to follow the funeral.
Despite warning that parallels cannot be established with the death of John Paul II in 2005, Ciciliano reiterated that “we are estimating around 200,000 people, although we do not know if they will be deployed in St. Peter’s Square or along the funeral procession” to Santa María la Mayor.
Meanwhile, the number of faithful who will pass through the burning chapel of Pope Francis, which until 1:00 p.m. this Thursday already amounted to 61,000, will rise significantly in the next few hours, until Friday it closes at 19.00 (17.00 GMT) for the ceremony of closing the coffin before the funeral on Saturday, he anticipated.
The person in charge drew attention to the significant drop in temperatures at night, so he called on the faithful to dress like “an onion” to be able to add or remove layers as needed.
Regarding the arrival of new faithful in Rome, he said that there are 260,000 seats available to travel by train, and that on the day of the funeral about 500 buses to the Italian capital are expected to arrive.
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“There will be state, commercial and private flights that will arrive at Fiumicino and Ciampino airports. We have also maintained Pratica di Mare as an airfield,” he added.
He also referred to the reception of the hundreds of world leaders and authorities who will be in Rome to attend the funeral, including the president of the United States or the kings of Spain, which he considered “very complex.”
The preparations “are being developed in close collaboration with the Prefecture of Rome for those aspects related to security, since there are elements that overlap,” he said.
This difficulty grows due to the fact that after the funerals most of these leaders will return immediately, but others prefer to stay in the city.
After the funeral, the second phase of the Civil Protection deployment will be activated, which includes the conclave to elect the new pope, when the forecasts point to an even greater number of faithful, which will also coincide with other massive events such as the final of the Soccer Cup on May 14.
A group of the poor and a delegation of migrants will participate in the funeral and burial of the pope on Saturday
A group of poor and needy and a delegation of migrants and rescuers will be present at the funeral and burial of Pope Francis this Saturday, April 26, as a last tribute to the pontiff, who was always close to the most disadvantaged and homeless people.
“A group of poor and needy people will be present on the steps that lead to the Papal Basilica of Santa María la Mayor to pay the last tribute to Pope Francis before the burial of the coffin,” the Vatican reported in a statement on Thursday.
The Arab League supports Hamas handing over control of Gaza and weapons to the Palestinian Authority
The Arab League expressed on Thursday its support for the Hamas Islamist group handing over control of the Gaza Strip to the Government of the Palestinian National Authority (ANPA), of President Mahmud Abbas, who assured that he must be the only one who controls weapons and represents the Palestinians before the international community.
The pan-Arab organization expressed its position on Thursday in a statement issued after the Arab ministerial meeting held on Wednesday at the headquarters of the Arab League in Cairo, coinciding with a claim by Abbas that the ANP assumes political control of Gaza, and that Hamas releases the 59 Israeli hostages it still holds and lay down their arms.
“The Council of the Arab League affirmed its support for President Mahmoud Abbas’ vision regarding the importance of achieving national (Palestinian) unity based on the commitment to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO),” the main member of the ANP that governs in small areas of the occupied West Bank, said the statement of the organization composed of 22 states.
In the note, the agency avoided mentioning Hamas by name, although it stressed that the PLO is the “only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”, and invited all Palestinian factions to “comply with the political program and international obligations” of the ANP.
He also insisted that the different Palestinian factions “comply with the principle of a (only) system (of government), a law and a legitimate weapon, and allow the Government (of the ANP) to assume the responsibilities of governance in Gaza within the framework of the political and geographical unity of the Palestinian territory occupied (by Israel) in 1967”.
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On the other hand, the statement “categorically rejected any form of displacement of the Palestinian people from their land, under any name, circumstance or justification, considering this part of the crime of genocide” against the inhabitants of the strip, where more than 51,000 people died in Israeli attacks since October 2023.
The Arab Foreign Ministers expressed, on the other hand, their support for the conference that France and Saudi Arabia plan to hold next June under the auspices of the UN to support the “two-state solution”, one Palestinian next to the Israeli.
They also showed their support for the Egyptian plan, supported last March by Arab and Islamic countries, for the reconstruction of Gaza, and “urging countries and financial institutions to quickly provide the financial support necessary for its implementation.”
Hamas has controlled Gaza since its militiamen expelled the forces of the ANP Government from the Strip in 2007, controlled by the secular group Fatah, also from Abbas and majority within the PLO.
The enmity between Hamas and Fatah resides, in addition to ideological differences, in the discrepancies that when facing the defense of a Palestinian State, since while Islamists advocate armed struggle and “resistance” against the Israeli occupation, the ANP opts for politics and negotiations.
From email to marriage: the day Pope Francis married a Uruguayan couple
The unexpected recovery of little Sara after being sprayed with holy water while hospitalized was the kick-off of the email exchange that made it possible for Pope Francis to marry Uruguayans Noelia Franco and Omar Caballero by surprise, in the Vatican and in front of his daughters.
September 19, 2018 was not just another day for the Caballero Franco family, who, to this day, are not clear why the Supreme Pontiff decided, responding to an email, to receive them in the private audience in which, unexpectedly, he officiated his marriage by the church and shared with them “the secret of the happy and lasting marriage”.
This is assured in dialogue with EFE by the mother of five daughters who dates back to 2014, when, shortly after being born, Sara – the youngest – had to be admitted to an Intensive Treatment Center for the VRS virus and applied a few drops of water blessed by Francis that a friend had brought from the Vatican.
“With my husband we said that we were going to put it on and that if he was saved we were going to go to the Vatican to thank him and it was like that. We put the droplets on her and automatically she entered the exit curve and came out,” says who, before the little girl turned two years old, traveled with her to Rome to thank her in person.
From that meeting he returned with “a lot of holy water” and rosaries, but also with the earring that his husband and other daughters knew him; so he let his secretary know in an email in which he mentioned that he wanted him to bless his 24-year marriage, because they had never been able to officiate him for the church because he did not have money “even for the rings.”
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“They answered our email and we started in Rome. It was all crazy, because we only had an email, which could have been someone’s joke: ‘I’ll wait for you at eight on September 19 9:15 at Casa Santa Marta’,” he says about the answer by which, after going through security checks, they ended up waiting for him in a room.
“At one point they make us stop, priests begin to pass and he appears with his arms like this – raised -, he shouts ‘Uruguayans!’ and there we loosened (the nerves) (…) He was a grandfather sitting with the family, talking about things about Uruguay, about Argentina,” he recalls the talk that gave rise to the unexpected question about whether they wanted to be married by him.
“We were tough and a great joke was sent. He said ‘the hare must be grabbed when it is locked up’ (…) and there he married us,” says who explains that, after his general audience, he talked again and dismissed them with some words that they still cherish: “He grabs our hand and tells us ‘I’m going to tell you the secret of happy and lasting marriage: with you, bread and onion’ and there he left.”
Marked both by that message, which they interpret as a reminder of being together “in good times and in bad times” and by the closeness of a Francisco whom they last saw last September, when he blessed the marriage of another of his daughters, the Caballero Francos only have left, to “comply with him”, “thank him”.
“He was a pope who was not of this world. He already did what he had to do, he faced what he had to face and leaves us with a new world now to debate what we can solve,” Franco emphasizes about the first Latin American pontiff, whose death, far from crying, his family took with happiness because, he says, “he is today on the side of Jesus.”
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Without being clear why he was so generous, to the point of giving his approval to the giant mandala of tribute to the Abrahamic religions that today the family builds on the land of its tourist enterprise, also designed in honor of the Argentine, Franco insists that all that remains is to “tell the story”.
“We know we have to tell their story, our story. Not only to Catholics, to Christians, but to the people who approach us to listen. Many people come to tell them this and it’s what we have left to do,” he concludes.
