Catholic faithful pay their respects to Pope Francis as lying in state begins – live (2025)

I was among the first group of journalists who were taken to see the pope lying in state. The queue to St Peter’s Basilica is absolutely massive and moving very slowly, but people are very patient.

Seeing Pope Francis was an emotional experience, but what struck me was the simplicity of his coffin, which is how he had always planned his funeral to be.

What you see inside St Peter’s Basilica is a very simple wooden casket which is simply lined with an elegant red cloth and the pope is wearing his red vestments and holding a rosary.

As one Italian pilgrim said to me, one thing that struck her was how youthful he looked.

She also mentioned that there were there a lot of young people queueing here today and I’d noted that as well. She felt that Pope Francis did manage to strike a chord with the young people.

We were due to have the canonisation of what will be the Catholic church’s first millennial saint Carlo Acutis on Sunday but that event has been suspended for now.

One word that that keeps coming back when I ask people what they think of Pope Francis is they talk about his humility.

For most people that was probably the most important characteristic and one that, at least according to the people I’ve been speaking to, they hope that the new pope will also have.

Let’s go to our Rome correspondent Angela Giuffrida, who is on the ground in the Vatican and just visited St Peter’s Basilica to see the pope and speak with pilgrims.

Thousands of Catholic faithful pay their final respects to Pope Francis – in pictures

A powerful earthquake with a magnitude of 6.2 hit the Marmara Sea near the western outskirts of Istanbul on Wednesday, officials said, with the impact felt across Turkey’s largest city where people rushed onto the streets, AFP reported.

“An earthquake of 6.2 magnitude occurred in Silivri, Marmara Sea, Istanbul,” interior minister Ali Yerlikaya said on X.

You can get a sense of how strong the earthquake was in this clip capturing the impact as CNN Turk was on air with a studio chat.

There is also a lot happening today on Ukraine, after London peace talks expected to take place on ministerial level were postponed at the very last minute, with meetings downgraded to official level and closed to media.

In the last half hour, US vice-president JD Vance warned that Moscow and Kyiv must strike a deal or Washington will end its efforts to reach a ceasefire.

“We’ve issued a very explicit proposal to both the Russians and the Ukrainians, and it’s time for them to either say yes, or for the United States to walk away from this process,” Vance told reporters in India, AFP reported.

You can follow all the latest updates here:

For what it’s worth, commission deputy chief spokesperson Arianna Podestà insisted the Apple and Meta decisions were “about enforcement, not about trade negotiations” with the US.

She said:

“It’s very distinct matters, completely separate.

We have a regulation. We are applying the regulation. We apply it, of course, in the same way to all companies here.

We had a decision in the making that you have been asking us about for a while. We have concluded the technical work on these decisions. We have said, so, I think, past, in the past couple of weeks, and then we have been drafting the decision.

Of course, there are legal aspects to be taken into account in when drafting a decision, because it has to be sound from a legal perspective. When the decision was ready, we adopted it, and this is where we stand today.”

But she faced strong criticism from journalists for both commissioners responsible for the fine not taking part in the press conference, and leaving it to spokespeople to communicate their decisions.

“We don’t hold back decisions for communication purposes. We need to enforce our regulation now,” Podestà replied.

In other European news elsewhere, the European Commission has just issued massive fines against US tech giants Apple and Meta for breaching its digital regulation, the Digital Markets Act.

The commission found that Apple breached the DMA’s “anti-steering obligation” for developers of apps distributed on App Store and has been fined €500m.

Separately, Meta was fined €200m for “breaching the DMA obligation to give consumers the choice of a service that uses less of their personal data after introducing a Consent or Pay model in 2023.

The full explanation for both decisions is here.

European Commission executive vice-president Teresa Ribera said the decisions “send a strong and clear message,” fining the companies for falling short of compliance with the rulebook.

“As a result, we have taken firm but balanced enforcement action against both companies, based on clear and predictable rules. All companies operating in the EU must follow our laws and respect European values,” she said.

But the move is likely to trigger an angry reaction from the US, as president Donald Trump repeatedly criticised EU regulations and what he perceived as taking aim at US companies.

Given the already tricky EU-US relations as a result of Trump’s aggressive trade policy, this could see the tensions rise further.

Alexis Corbière, a leftwing French MP in Seine-Saint-Denis, has criticised the French government’s decision to fly flags at halfmast on public buildings in France on Saturday on the day of Pope Francis’ funeral.

Corbière said that France was a secular Republic built on a clear separation of church and state, this meant it had a duty to remain neutral towards all religions and not give special treatment to one religion over another.

He told France Info he was also shocked that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and two French ministers, would attend the pope’s funeral.

He said French secularism shouldn’t be a “variable principle” that changes according to the religion.

“If tomorrow the Dalai Lama dies, clearly French flags won’t fly at half mast. Clearly the head of state wouldn’t go to a funeral in the same way for a Muslim religious leader or a Jewish religious leader.”

In 2005, when Pope John Paul II died, some French politicians also cited French secularism to question the government’s decision to fly flags at half mast.

The ceremony has now concluded, and the three days of lying in state will begin, with Catholic faithful free to pay their final respects to Pope Francis until midnight and then again from 7am, up until 7pm on Friday, the night before the funeral.

Just heard from Cardinal Thomas Christopher Collins, the former archbishop of Toronto.

Collins was among the procession. He said: “It was the most profound moment. But from the simple prayers to the incense, it was no different to a funeral that any baptised person would have.”

Collins, 78, will also be part of the conclave to elect the next pope, but declined to give any hint of who he thought might succeed Francis.

Meanwhile, the ceremony inside St Peter’s Basilica is now over, with cardinals lining up to pay their respects at pope’s coffin first.

I will bring you more updates from Angela in Rome later during the day, as she sets off to speak with pilgrims queueing to pay their final respects to Pope Francis.

It’s still hard to digest that Pope Francis is no longer with us, especially as just a few days ago, he was sitting on the balcony, waving to the crowd during the Easter Sunday mass, and he had been out and about a lot in the weeks leading to his death.

And although we were expecting it, because he was getting over a severe illness and was very ill, we didn’t expect it to happen so soon.

The general atmosphere is quite solemn, with hymns being sung in Latin, repeating the call to “pray for us,” which was always the final thing whenever the pope communicated or said anything. He would say, “Please don’t forget to pray for me.”

There are big crowds in the square and people would have been waiting since about 7 am this morning.

As part of the procession, we saw dozens of cardinals walking in front, alongside and behind the coffin, flanked by the Swiss guards solemnly lined up outside the Basilica.

What was unexpected was that the coffin was open. We don’t know who decided that, whether the pope made that decision himself.

I was just talking to a Spanish Vatican reporter – Jordi Barcia Antelo, Vatican correspondent for the Spanish national radio, RNE – and he said it was most likely the pope who made that decision and that it was his final way of showing he was close to the people; he didn’t want to be hidden away. But that’s a surprise this morning.

Let’s briefly turn to our Rome correspondent Angela Giuffrida, watching the ceremony from the rooftop above St Peter’s Square.

The coffin has now entered St Peter’s Basilica.

The crowds gathered in St Peter’s Square break into applause, as the coffin with Pope Francis’s body is carried through the square on its way into the Basilica.

The procession has just entered St Peter’s Square.