Pope Benedict XVI buried at Vatican after thousands gather for funeral

After some 200,000 people paid their respects during three days of public viewing, authorities estimated some 100,000 would attend Benedict’s funeral, though it was not clear if that many did in the end.

Only Italy and Germany were invited to send official delegations but other leaders took the Vatican up on its offer and come in their “private capacity”. They included several heads of state, at least four prime ministers and two delegations of royal representatives. In addition, a host of patriarchs joined 125 cardinals in the seats to the side of the altar.

Among them was Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen, who was given special court permission to attend the funeral and arrived in Rome on Thursday. Mr Zen was detained in May on suspicion of colluding with foreign forces under a national security law that China passed after he fell afoul of authorities over his participation in a now-silenced democracy movement. His passport was revoked when he was detained.

Matteo Colonna, a 20-year-old seminarian from Teramo, Italy, said he went in part because of the historic nature of the funeral - but also because it had personal resonance for him.

“The first spark of my vocation started under the pontificate of Benedict but then it became even stronger under Pope Francis,” Mr Colonna said while sitting in prayer in St Peter’s Square ahead of the funeral. “I see a continuity between these two popes and the fact that today Francis is celebrating the funeral in Benedict’s memory is an historical event.”

Early on Thursday, the Vatican released the official history of Benedict’s life, a short document in Latin placed in a metal cylinder in his coffin before it was sealed, along with the coins and medallions minted during his papacy and his pallium stoles.

The document gave ample attention to Benedict’s historic resignation and referred to him as “pope emeritus”, citing verbatim the Latin words he uttered on February 11 2013, when he announced he would retire.

The document, known as a “rogito” or deed, also cited his theological and papal legacy, including his outreach to Anglicans and Jews and his efforts to combat clergy sexual abuse “continually calling the church to conversion, prayer, penance and purification”.

Francis did not dwell on Benedict’s specific legacy in his homily and only uttered his name once, in the final line, delivering instead a meditation on Jesus’s willingness to entrust himself to God’s will.

“Holding fast to the Lord’s last words and to the witness of his entire life, we too, as an ecclesial community, want to follow in his steps and to commend our brother into the hands of the Father,” Francis said at the end.

During St John Paul II’s 25 years as pope, Ratzinger spearheaded a crackdown on dissent as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, taking action against the left-leaning liberation theology that spread in Latin America in the 1970s and against dissenting theologians and nuns who did not toe the Vatican’s hard line on matters like sexual morals.

His legacy was marred by the clergy sexual abuse scandal, even though he recognised earlier than most the “filth” of priests who raped children and actually laid the groundwork for the Holy See to punish them.

As cardinal and pope, he passed sweeping church legislation that resulted in 848 priests being defrocked from 2004-2014, roughly his pontificate with a year on either end. But abuse survivors still held him responsible for the crisis, for failing to sanction any bishop who moved abusers around and identifying him as embodying the clerical system that long protected the institution over victims.

A group representing German clergy abuse survivors called on German officials attending Benedict’s funeral to demand more action from the Vatican on sexual abuse. Eckiger Tisch asked German leaders to demand Francis issue a “universal church law” stipulating zero tolerance in dealing with abuse by clergy.

“Any celebration that marks the life of abuse enablers like Benedict must end,” said the main US abuse survivor group Snap.

The funeral ritual itself is modelled on the code used for dead popes but with some modifications given Benedict was not a reigning pontiff when he died.

After the Mass, Benedict’s cypress coffin was due to be placed inside a zinc one, then an outer oak casket before being entombed in the crypt in the grottos underneath St Peter’s Basilica which once held the tomb of St John Paul II before it was moved upstairs.

While the ritual is unusual, it does have some precedent; in 1802, Pope Pius VII presided over the funeral in St Peter’s of his predecessor, Pius VI, who died in exile in France in 1799 as a prisoner of Napoleon.

Benedict never intended his retirement to last as long as it did - at nearly 10 years it was longer than his eight-year pontificate. And the unprecedented situation of a retired pope living alongside a reigning one prompted calls for protocols to guide future popes emeritus to prevent any confusion about who is really in charge.