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More than 250,000 mourners visited St. Peter’s Basilica in a three-day span in 2025, paying their respects to Pope Francis who passed away in April 2025. Many mourners had already planned on being in Rome anyway that weekend for the Holy Year canonization of the first millennial saint, Carlo Acutis.
Francis died in April 2025 at age 88 after suffering a cerebral stroke that put him into a coma and led to irreversible heart failure. The pope’s casket was closed and sealed Friday by Cardinal Kevin Farrell as part of the next steps in carefully orchestrated rites set off by the death of a pope.
Thousands of people also streamed past Francis’ tomb on Sunday at St. Mary Major Basilica, a 1,600-year-old church and shrine to the Virgin Mary a few miles from the Vatican where the pope, in breaking with tradition, was buried a day earlier.
More than 2,500 police officers and 1,500 soldiers provided security during the funeral, with officials planning for around 200,000 mourners in St. Peter’s Square and up to 300,000 people along the two-mile route from the Vatican to the pope’s burial place.
Some members of the College of Cardinals went to Francis’ tomb at the Basilica of Saint Mary Major on Sunday to pay homage, the Vatican said. The cardinals then gathered there for evening prayer led by the basilica’s coadjutor archpriest, Lithuanian Cardinal Rolanda Makrickas.
Francis became the first pope to be buried outside the Vatican in more than a century when he was laid to rest at St. Mary Major. The burial took place Saturday after his casket was transported through the streets of Rome in a modified popemobile following a funeral service that saw more than a quarter million people, including world leaders, converge on St. Peter’s Square.
The pope, who was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, had requested a “simple” burial “without particular ornamentation.” The casket was placed in a simple marble tomb in a side aisle of the St. Mary Major basilica. Only his name in Latin, “Franciscus,” is inscribed on top − as the pope instructed − while a reproduction of the plain cross that he used to wear around his neck hangs above the niche.
For this month’s Imagery Work Break, we feature a Pléiades Neo 56-cm color image from April 26, 2025. This imagery was collected at a high off-nadir or tilt towards the ground, so the view is from the side and is less detailed than typical Pléiades Neo 30-cm data. It was taken over St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican City where people gathered for the public funeral mass for Pope Francis. You can see the tiny dots of people pressed together with the river snaking along nearby.
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(Image Courtesy: Airbus. Processed by Apollo Mapping for improved color accuracy and clarity.)
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