In the meantime, first details are emerging as to the scale of the logistics operation required for this Saturday’s funeral, with over 170 foreign delegations and around 200,000 faithful expected to come to the Vatican. The timing of the funeral coincides with the Italian bank holiday, the Liberation Day, which falls on Friday and will see muted celebrations this year due to the national mourning. Corriere della Serra is reporting that some of the most advanced defence and security mechanisms will be used to protect the faithful on Sunday, with elaborate jamming technologies, a no-fly zone over the city with enhanced air force monitoring in place, and heightened anti-terrorism alert measures. The police is also working out how to provide necessary support to all foreign delegations, and on top of that preparing for a hypothetical scenario in which an Italian cardinal gets picked as the new pope, which they expect would prompt more Italian faithful to descend on Rome. Pope Francis’s body will be moved to St Peter’s Basilica on Wednesday morning where it will lie in state for three days to allow Catholic faithful to pay their final respects ahead of a funeral expected to bring a host of world leaders including Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump. The ceremony is scheduled to start 9am Rome (8am BST), and will see Francis’s body leave the Santa Maria residence where he lived and move in a procession into St Peter’s Basilica, entering through the main entrance. The body will lie in state until Friday 7pm local time, when the public mourning will end in preparation for the funeral on Saturday morning. I will follow the ceremony and the latest reports from the Vatican and elsewhere for you. It’s Wednesday, 23 April 2025, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live. Good morning.
Author: Jakub Krupa