ROMA.- There is plenty of white marble tomb, humble, simplethere is a white rose, its favorite flower, linked to Santa Teresita de Lisieux. And hundreds of people line up to go pay tribute, take a picture, leave a flower.
The next day of the shocking and solemn funeral and the transfer in white and subsequent daddy funeral in the Basilica of Santa María la Mayor, the Barrio del Esquilino -where the Argentine embassy is found before Italy and close to the Trein station of Termini,, The pilgrimage goal became of hundreds of people who want to pay tribute to the humble tomb of Pope Francis.
Already before at 7 in the morning the doors of the Pontifical Basilica were opened, which is one of the oldest churches in Rome, built to honor the Virgin after in August there had been a magical snowfall, many people were there, rowing To go to pay tribute to the Pope of the people.
At noon from another day of a sun that begins to hit stronger, members of the Civil Protection asked those who put themselves in the row if they had eaten or drink water, because the waiting times to enter could be long: minimum of the hours.
After the apotheotic goodbye that Pope Francis had yesterday, with more than 170 delegations from all over the world and 400.000 personas Saying goodbye to his solemn funeral and through the streets through which the Papamóvil passed to move his remains to his beloved Basilica of Santa María la Mayor, it was expected that people, still moved, would appear in mass there.
View the number of people -all ages and nationalities, inside the ujieres ask to accelerate and advance quickly. Songs are heard and people with bouquets are seen to leave on the sepulcher, which impacts its simplicity and simplicity.
Pope Francis was the one in charge of designing him, to reflect what his papacy was marked by precisely by gestures of humility and austerity and his predilection for the poor: he chose the white marble from Liguria, the land of his grandparents, a single inscription, which says Francis And that above was the reproduction of his silver pectoral cross, with the image of the good shepherd who loads the sheep on his back.
It is believed that the fact that Francisco’s tomb will be there will mark a transformation for better, A “up-grade”, of the Barrio del EsquilinoNot too well known. “The entire area will grow,” said Francesco Rellli, former mayor of Rome and former Minister of Culture, who stressed that few know that the Basilica has the highest bell tower in Rome, 75 meters.
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Pope Francis is not the first pontiff who is not buried in the Vatican, where most of his predecessors (147 of 266) rest, but it is The first in 122 years he made to the decision to leave the Vatican. The last one was Leo XIII in 1903, which rests in the Basilica of San Juan de Letrán.
The Basilica of Santa María la Mayor -Due seven other pontiffs are buriedthe artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Paulina Bonaparte, sister of Napoleon-, symbolically marks the beginning and end of Francisco’s pontificate.
The day after being elected, on March 13, 2013, Jorge Bergoglio He surprised the world when leaving the Vatican to go to venerate the “Madonna Salus Populi Romani”the former Marian icon of the Basilica, of which he was always devoted and also used to visit being archbishop of Buenos Aires every time he was traveling to Rome. After leaving a bouquet of flowers, that same March 14 the Pope surprised everyone even more when stopping at the hotel for ecclesiastics of the road of the Scrofa, where he used to stay, to pay his account.
Before and after each international trip, Pope Francis went to greet his favorite “virgin”, which, already being very sick, did again on March 23, the day they registered at the Gemelli hospital after 38 days of hospitalization in which he was twice on the edge of death and that meant the beginning of his end.
And that I visit again on Saturday, April 12, on the eve of Holy Week, when it appeared surprisingly there, With nasal cannulas ontogether with his guardian angels, his Massimiliano nurse Strappetti and the Argentine priest Juan Cruz Villalón, one of his private secretaries.
Although few imagined him, in addition to going to pray for the last time to the Virgin Salus Populi Romani, near which he now rests, He had gone to control how his grave wasCardinal Lithuanus said, Rolandas Makrickas, Archpriest of the Basilica.
This afternoon the members of the Cardenalicio College –among which is Francisco’s successor And that tomorrow will resume the pre-Cóclave meetings, they will also go to the Basilica of Santa María la Mayor to pay tribute to his humble and austere tomb, a style of being a potato that will have to see if the next one will continue, or not.
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