Pope Francis, on Thursday, led the funeral of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, in front of tens of thousands of mourners at St Peter’s Square, Vatican City.

Red-clad cardinals, dignitaries, and thousands of priests and nuns from around the world gathered to say goodbye to the German theologian, who stunned the Catholic Church in 2013 by becoming the first pontiff in six centuries to resign.

For the first time in modern history, the proceedings were led by a sitting pope, Francis, who delivered the homily in Italian as part of a multi-lingual service with a Latin mass.

“Benedict… may your joy be complete as you hear his (God’s) voice, now and forever!” the pontiff said in tribute to his predecessor, who died last Saturday at the age of 95.

At the end of the service, Francis made the sign of the cross over Benedict’s simple cypress wood coffin and bowed his head, before 12 besuited pallbearers carried it into St Peter’s Basilica.

Benedict will be interred in a tomb in the crypt beneath the basilica, where John Paul II’s body lay in state before it was moved for his beatification in 2011. He was made a saint in 2014.

Born Joseph Ratzinger, the ex-pope had not been a head of state for a decade, but world leaders including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni were among those in attendance.

According to the police, an estimated 50,000 people were in the square for the funeral, many of them having queued up since dawn to bid farewell.

“Benedict is a bit like my father, so I had to pay homage to him,” a 59-year-old man from Milan, Cristina Grisanti, who hailed the former Pope’s “purity, his candour, his mildness”, said.

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An estimated 195,000 people had already paid their respects earlier when the body lay in state.

Pope Benedict was the first German pope in 1,000 years and church bells rang out across Germany as the funeral finished on Thursday, while many Germans were also at the Vatican.

“We owe him so much. We want to show that we stand behind him. We actually know too little about Pope Benedict. He always accepted everything the way God wants it. This is a good example for us humans,” 34-year-old Benedikt Rothweiler, who came from Aachen with his family, said.

Beyond St Peter’s, many of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics had been expected to follow the funeral proceedings on television and the radio.

In the majority Catholic Philippines, churches held requiem masses for the former pontiff, including at Malolos Cathedral near the capital Manila.

Portugal declared a national day of mourning on Thursday, while in Italy, flags were flown at half-mast on public buildings.

The only official delegations were from Germany and Italy.

Other dignitaries, including Belgian and Spanish royals, the presidents of Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Hungary, Slovenia, and Togo, and the premiers of the Czech Republic, Gabon, and Slovakia, among others, attended in a personal capacity.

The service followed traditional papal funerals, with a few changes to prayers and readings to reflect Benedict’s status as emeritus pope.

Before being laid in the crypt, his cypress coffin was due to be placed first inside a zinc coffin, then a wooden case.

As is traditional, coins and medals minted during his papacy and a written text describing his pontificate, sealed in a metal cylinder, will be placed alongside his body.

The Star