Earlier, I posted on FB and Twitter a Vatican News report with a few photos of the funeral Mass this morning in St. Peter’s Basilica presided over by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, dean of the College of Cardinals. What I wrote there, I re-post below, along with some photos by CNA photographer Alan Koppschall.
Pope Francis this morning met with the staff, faculty and seminarians of the North American College: Here is a report: Pope encourages future priests to become prophetic witnesses of the Gospel – Vatican News
CARDINAL PELL, “A MAN OF GOD AND MAN OF THE CHURCH CHARACTERIZED BY A DEEP FAITH AND GREAT STEADFASTNESS OF DOCTRINE”
Speaking personally, today was a very moving morning! So many people came for Cardinal Pell’s funeral Mass…dignitaries and diplomats, men and women religious, friends and family of the Cardinal as well as simple acquaintances…that the ushers had to add rows of chairs to the pews that accommodate several hundred faithful at the celebrated Altar of the Chair in the apse of St. Peter’s Basilica.
Scores more remained standing during the funeral Mass, at the end of which Pope Francis appeared for the final commendatio and valedictio, delivered in Latin. As the archbishops and cardinals processed in for Mass, it was hard not to see the sadness on the face of Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, secretary for two decades to the late Benedict XVI, a prelate now bereft of two friendships.
An interesting note that I learned this morning. One of the people who came to pay their respects to the cardinal as he lay in state yesterday in the small and historic church of Santo Stefano degli Abissini was a homeless man who, at night, slept on or near the small square where Cardinal Pell lived. Over the years, it seems, they apparently became friends and I would not be surprised to learn that the cardinal invited him one day to coffee and cornetto at his favorite cafe on the piazza. That would be the cardinal so many of us know!
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re’s homily summarized in Vatican News: Cardinal Re: Faith sustained late Cardinal Pell in difficult final years – Vatican News
Joan's Rome 