Vatican releases first images of Pope Francis in open coffin – The Times of India

Vatican releases first images of Pope Francis in open coffin (Image credit score: AP)

The Vatican on Tuesday printed the first photograph and video of Pope Francis mendacity in repose, exhibiting the late pontiff in an open coffin dressed in purple liturgical vestments, a mitre on his head and a rosary positioned in his fingers.
The images had been taken contained in the personal chapel of the Casa Santa Marta, his Vatican residence the place he handed away on Monday on the age of 88.

The solemn visuals come only a day after the Holy See confirmed that Pope Francis died of a cerebral stroke which led to a coma and irreversible coronary heart failure. Dr Andrea Arcangeli, director of the directorate of well being and hygiene of the Vatican Metropolis State, licensed the trigger of demise in an official medical report, which additionally detailed the pontiff’s lengthy-standing well being points, together with Sort II diabetes, hypertension, and a historical past of respiratory failure and bilateral pneumonia.
His demise was formally recorded at 7:35 am (native time) on April 21 by electrocardiographic thanatography, in accordance with the Vatican.
Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, was the first pope from Latin America. His papacy started in March 2013 and spanned greater than a decade marked by reform, humility, and a worldwide concentrate on the poor. He made his closing public look only a day earlier than his passing — briefly greeting crowds from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica on Easter Sunday, though he was too frail to ship the complete conventional message.
As revealed in his will, Pope Francis had requested a modest burial on the Papal Basilica of St Mary Main in Rome, departing from the lengthy custom of entombing popes at St Peter’s Basilica. He had expressed a lifelong devotion to the Salus Populi Romani icon housed in the Pauline Chapel of St Mary Main and requested to be laid to relaxation close by in a easy, unadorned tomb marked solely “Franciscus.”
“I want my final earthly journey to finish at this very historical Marian shrine,” he wrote in the testomony dated June 29, 2022. “The tomb should be in the earth; easy, with out explicit ornament,” he added, additional stating there ought to be no reference to his papal workplace on the headstone. “With full of life hope in everlasting life, I provide the struggling of the final half of my life for peace in the world and brotherhood amongst peoples,” he wrote.
This makes Francis the first pope in almost 150 years to not be buried at St Peter’s, with the final being Pope Pius IX. The tomb shall be positioned close to the Queen of Peace statue contained in the basilica, fulfilling his private want.
His request additionally displays his aversion to conventional papal funeral customs. In his autobiography Hope, Francis wrote, “The Vatican is the house of my closing service, not my eternity.”