The mood in St Peter’s Square in the Vatican was one of sad resignation on Tuesday as preparations began for the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday.
What had been expected to happen had happened, but it was still a surprise. As Betty Leahy from Killeagh in Co Cork said, it was “very sad to hear he is dead but I think everybody was kind of half expecting it”.
She and her three sons were on a family break on their first visit to Rome. The death of Pope Francis was “a surprise. We knew he was not well but didn’t expect it to happen when we were here,” she said. “It’s a very special time to be here and an honour at this time. He was a very good man and seemed to be very honourable.”
It was also a first time in Rome for Steven and Danielle Moronhi, from Melbourne, Australia. Both are Catholic. “We had every intention of visiting the Vatican on this day [Tuesday], but without knowing what was happening yesterday,” he said.
They saw “so many people come, more than we expected, to pay their respects”.
Pope Francis, Steven said, “established a change in behaviour of what had been the guardrails of Catholicism for a long, long time”.
He felt this aligns “more with how the new generations think”.
Hannah, who was present with her four children, is from north Wales. All Catholics too, it was again coincidental that they were in Rome at the moment. She said Francis didn’t have a huge impact on her life. “He could, perhaps, have made more changes. For women, homosexuality, female priests in the church. I think he made good headway in other aspects of the Church.”
Newlyweds Guilherme and Giovanna Markese are from Sao Paolo in Brazil. “We just got married, two days ago,” said Guilherme. He works for pharmaceutical company Merck, and Giovanna with Amazon. They married in Sao Paolo “and then came here [to Rome] last Friday on honeymoon”.
The death of Pope Francis was “very surprising because we were planning to come here [to the Vatican] on the day that the Pope died”. They are not Catholic. “No, we are Christians, Baptists, but we have a lot of friends who are Catholic.”
They knew “a little bit” about Pope Francis. “I think he was very kind with the followers and also with the people around the world. He was very revolutionary, progressive,” said Guilherme.
Giovanna thought the late pope “had a really good sense of humanity, kind, he had a big heart”.
And Guilherme was clear, it did not matter that Francis was Argentinian. “It didn’t matter to us. We are Brazilians and kind of rivals,” he said. “When we are talking about religion, this type of rivalry drops off.”
