Vatican City, Jan 2 (EFE).- An endless line of faithful crossed Saint Peter’s Basilica today to bid farewell to the pope emeritus Benedict XVIprocession before his body in the midst of a reverent silence and the non-stop rhythm of an ancient litany.
The remains of Ratzinger, who died on Saturday at the age of 95, will be exhibited until Wednesday on a golden cloth catafalque at the foot of the Altar of the Confession and Bernini’s baldachin, on the place where, according to tradition, Saint Peter was buried. .
The funeral chapel received the visit of thousands of people – some 35,000 daily are expected – and the line even went around the Vatican square, where hundreds of faithful still gathered at night waiting for the temple to open its doors.
These are men and women, lay and religious, and numerous tourists who did not want to miss the opportunity to bid farewell to this discreet and learned pope who surprised the world in 2013 by resigning from his high ministry, the first to do so in six centuries.
GOODBYE TO AN UNPRECEDENT NON-REIGNING POPE
Benedict XVI lies in the center of the basilica, illuminated by a beam of light that trickles down from the dome, escorted by two Swiss guards with halberds and next to a lighted candle.
Until there he was taken discreetly with the first light of dawn, first by car from his residence, the monastery in the Mater Ecclesiae Vatican gardens, followed by the silent nocturnal procession of some of his faithful collaborators, and then on a litter inside the basilica .
His appearance had been a question mark until the end, since he could not wear the symbols of papal power, since he was not a currently reigning pope and especially since one, Francis, was in office.
Benedict XVI wears the papal vestments, a white tunic covered by an intense red chasuble, the color of papal mourning, and his head was touched by a white miter, but he did not wear the pallium, the white wool stole that indicates jurisdiction papal.
Nor the cross staff, nor the Fisherman’s Ring, which every pontiff wears on his finger during his “reign” and which is destroyed with each death or resignation.
On his feet, a pair of austere black shoes, not the classic red ones, which evoke the blood of the martyrs.
“PLEASE DON’T STOP”
The procession of the faithful and onlookers is led along a cordoned-off route and orchestrated by a gendarme who repeated, with a certain exhausted air, “keep walking, please”, aware that there are too many people for the three days of funeral chapel.
Before the remains, each person has just a few seconds to say goodbye. There are those who bow their heads, others make the sign of the cross and many take advantage of the circumstance to take on their phones the unusual stamp of a dead pope.
A protocol, yes, impregnated by a respectful silence and only broken by the words of a priest who celebrates mass in the apse of the basilica, on the Altar of the Chair. Because apparently the rites of faith never stop.
And at a given moment in the morning by the laughter of two children who, oblivious to the solemnity of the act, play jumping between the gigantic marble tesserae that patch the pavement of the temple.
The body of Benedict XVI is watched over by his Vatican “family”, the people who assisted him after his resignation in his retirement in the Mater Ecclesiae monastery, including his personal secretary, Monsignor Georg Gänswein, who receives condolences as if he were a son .
But also by some nuns and former hierarchs of their Curia, such as the Spanish Cardinal Antonio Cañizares, seated with his red skull cap and cane in hand, or the cardinal Camillo Ruini, who prays in moving silence shrunken in his wheelchair.
“We have felt great emotion,” Juan and María, a couple from Madrid who were caught on their honeymoon by the papal death and who, as Catholics, did not hesitate to keep “an hour and a bit” in line to access, told EFE. to the burning chapel.
SOBER SOLEMNITY
Meanwhile, some workers prepare the Christmas-decorated St. Peter’s Square for the funeral, which will take place next Thursday, presided over by Francisco, his successor, and in the presence of official delegations from Italy and Germany, his native country.
It will be a solemn rite, in the case of a pope who wanted to continue wearing white even after his resignation, but also sober at his express wish.
Later, Ratzinger, the great theologian and “guardian of the faith”, will enter history in the Vatican crypt, like many other popes in history, resting forever in the tomb of his admired John Paul II, today sanctified in the altars of Christianity. EFE
