The coffin of Pope Francis is carried in front of dignitaries, including President Donald Trump, center, and French President Emmanuel Macron, during his funeral in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Saturday, April 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

 By Ademola Adegbamigbe

The late head of the Catholic Church worldwide, Pope Francis was laid to rest today, 26 April 2025, at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.

It all started in what was called the “rite of the Entombment of the Roman Pontiff”  at 1 p.m. local time (7 a.m. ET) and ended at 1.30 pm. The ceremony was presided over by the man one could call the regent, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the “camerlengo” whose task was to arrange Francis’ funeral. The second part of his assignment as the temporary head of the Church is to organise a conclave to choose a successor for the late Pontiff.

Apart from his feat of being the first Pope from Latin America, he was not buried within the Vatican but outside of it, at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. He demanded in his will that he did not want any elaborate epitaph but just one word: “Franciscus.”

The service started at St. Peter’s Basilica shortly after 10 a.m. local time (4 a.m. ET), lasting just over two hours, according to a CNN report.

Pope Francis Buried

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, one of the most senior figures in the Catholic Church, as CNN put it, led the simplified ceremony. “It was a series of rituals of religious hymns, an emotional homily and a final farewell to the pope, who was the first Latin American pontiff.

Francis’ modest coffin was then transported in the white popemobile over the River Tiber to be entombed in Rome’s Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore – an illuminated basilica that sits atop the highest point in the Italian capital.”

More than 250,000 worshipers, religious and political figures, lined St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican, on Saturday to pay their respects to the late Pope Francis, who died earlier this week at the age of 88. Chukwudi Iwuchukwu, a public affairs analyst made a post that the Catholic Church’s influence is amazing! A total of 130 delegations, including 55 heads of state, 14 heads of government, and 12 reigning monarchs, were in attendance at the Pope’s funeral. “No other church in the world commands this level of influence and global attention,” he said

It is a good point he raised. Why did the death of a church leader attract the Heads of Governments all over the world? The Vatican, the Headquarters of the Catholic Church, with an area of 49 hectares (121 acres) and a population of about 882 is, as Britannica put it, a sovereign state, a landlocked country, city-state, microstate, and enclave surrounded by, and historically a part of, Rome in Italy. It became independent from Italy in 1929 with the Lateran Treaty, and is a distinct territory under “full ownership, exclusive dominion, and sovereign authority and jurisdiction” of the Holy See, which is itself a sovereign entity under international law, maintaining the city-state’s temporal power, governance, diplomatic, and spiritual independence.

The Lateran Treaty was, as published in an article, “Vatican City turns 91”. Vatican News. 11 February 2020, one component of the Lateran Pacts of 1929, agreements between Italy under Victor Emmanuel III, the Holy See under Pope Pius XI and Benito Mussolini. It was to settle the long-standing Roman question. The treaty and associated pacts were named after the Lateran Palace, where they were signed on 11 February 1929, and the Italian Parliament ratified them on 7 June 1929.

As recorded in A History of Western Society (Tenth ed.). Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2010. p. 900, the treaty recognised Vatican City as an independent state under the sovereignty of the Holy See. Italy also agreed to give the Catholic Church financial compensation for the loss of the Papal States. In 1948, the Lateran Treaty was recognized in the Constitution of Italy (Constitution of Italy, Article 7) as regulating the relations between the Italian Republic and the Catholic Church. The treaty was significantly revised in 1984, ending the status of Catholicism as the sole state religion; however, the Vatican still remains an independent nation to the present day.

As governed by the Holy See, Vatican City State, as published as published in many historical materials, “is an ecclesiastical or sacerdotal-monarchical state ruled by the Pope, who is the bishop of Rome and head of the Catholic Church. The highest state functionaries are all Catholic clergy of various origins.” That is why their ambassador is called papal nuncio, apostolic nuncio, who is a diplomatic representative of the Holy See