The dome of St Peter’s was shrouded in mist for the funeral of Pope Benedict, with the cupola and the cross disappearing behind the figures of the apostles that surmount the facade. It was an extraordinary crowd gathered in the freezing cold. There were many Germans, many Italians and people from everywhere else you could think of.
One jolly German from Stuttgart, Damir Galich, who travelled by himself, said he came because he wanted to express his gratitude to the late Pope Emeritus: “he was a conservative, but I admired him so much,” he said.
Manfred and Udike Heerdegen, from Kampten in Bavaria, explained they they “wanted to come to show the love we have for him and our admiration for his theological brilliance and our gratitude to him. He was German, he was Bavarian and that showed in his faith. He said that the Church is not a ‘book Church’ but it is about Christ.
“He said too in his last testament that he thought that Bavaria was an expression of the beauty of creation. He loved Bavaria. He was a lovable man, a lovable personality. The German people are perhaps critical of him now, but they will come to appreciate his legacy now that he is dead.”
Christina Hengstler, Sophia Menschler and teenagers Pia and Johannes, from Baden-Württemberg, had come to Rome because “he attracted our hearts. We love him and we are happy that he is in heaven.” As for Johnannes, he was particularly here because, he said simply, “the Pope was German.”
Was he popular in Germany? “Unfortunately, not officially,” said Christina. “But with the people it is different; the people loved him.” Much of the requiem mass was in Latin; the one hymn that everyone joined in was the old familiar Salve Regina. It’s hard to think of a more striking case for the use of Latin as the universal language of the church; no one felt left out.
There was the most extraordinary diversity of habits, religious dress and uniforms. The Swiss Guard in harlequin colours were resplendent, but there was every variety of guild, order and association here; it could be designed to explain the motto of unity in diversity. The organisers asked that people should not raise their banners; that didn’t last. At the close of the mass there was an enormous one in German: “Thank you, Pope Benedict.”
The spectacle of the Pope was extraordinary. In the midst of all the pomp Francis appeared in simple white, in a wheelchair. When the woman next to me, Alessandra from Rome, saw him, she exclaimed, “Ah, look at him!” He wore a scarlet cope for the mass but the bitter cold must have affected him, too. The most poignant moment came not when he was giving his homily, but when, at the close, he stood silently before the other pope’s coffin and laid his hand upon it in prayer.
The organisation evident throughout broke down only at communion, which was a scrum, with the congregation trying to make their way across the banks of chairs to the line of priests standing behind the barricades, under little papal white-and-yellow umbrellas.
At the close, there was applause as the coffin was borne inside the basilica. And then there were the discordant shouts of “Santo subito!” from organised claques trying to create the momentum to have Benedict too declared a saint. It was a jarring element in what was a simple, dignified service.
Manfred Heerdegen summed it up best: “A mass without pomp for a man without pomp. But very simple, very dignified, very pleasant.” Afterwards, the Archbishop of Toronto, Thomas Collins, reflected that it had been “a simple holy service for a simple holy man”. He didn’t think anything of the canonisation idea but he did say emphatically that “he could be a Doctor of the Church. I’d be happy if he were.”
The most joyous element came at the end with an unexpected sound. It was a procession of almost 50 companies of Bavarians marching behind their regional banners, dressed in splendid hunting caps with feathers, in knickerbockers and grey or green jackets, the women in long skirts and hats, their beautiful embroidered banners of the Virgin Mary held on enormous poles.
“Benedict was a Bavarian patriot,” one of them told me proudly. “That’s why we’re here.” They marched to a sound once heard across Europe, that of a German band. And then they headed to the pub.
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