Funeral of Pope John Paul II

Funeral of Pope John Paul II

The body of Pope John Paul II lying in state.
Date	8 April 2005
Location	St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City
Participants	The College of Cardinals (led by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger), various dignitaries worldwide, worldwide Catholics

The funeral of Pope John Paul II was held on 8 April 2005, six days after his death on 2 April. The funeral was followed by the novemdiales devotional in which the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Catholic Churches observe nine days of mourning.

On 22 February 1996, Pope John Paul II introduced revisions to the centuries-old ceremonies surrounding papal death, repose and burial. The revisions enacted through the apostolic constitution Universi Dominici gregis applied to his own funeral.

Pope John Paul's funeral brought together what was, at the time, the single largest gathering in history of heads of state outside the United Nations, surpassing the funeral of Winston Churchill (1965). Four kings, five queens, at least 70 presidents and prime ministers, and more than 14 leaders of other religions attended, alongside the faithful. It is likely to have been one of the largest single gathering of Christianity in history, with numbers estimated in excess of four million mourners gathering in Rome alone.

Coinciding with the funeral in Vatican City, archbishops and bishops at cathedrals throughout the world celebrated memorial Masses. In an historical rarity, Protestant and Eastern Orthodox leaders, as well as representatives and heads from Judaism, Islam and Buddhism, offered their own memorials and prayers as a way of sympathising with the grief of Roman Catholics.

At the funeral itself, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I was in the honorary first seat in the sector reserved for delegations from churches not in full communion with the Holy See; this was the first time an Ecumenical Patriarch attended a papal funeral since the Great Schism. The Archbishop of Canterbury (then Rowan Williams), was also present at the papal funeral, the first time since the Church of England broke with the Catholic Church in the 16th century. Also for the first time ever, the head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Patriarch Abune Paulos attended a papal funeral.