AP NEWS
VATICAN CITY — A written account of the history-making papacy of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI will be placed alongside his body in his coffin for burial, the Vatican said Tuesday in revealing plans for the first funeral of a pontiff to resign in six centuries.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people filed through St. Peter’s Basilica to view his body as it lay in state for a second day.
When the viewing ends Wednesday evening, a one-page account of Benedict’s nearly eight-year papacy will be put into a metal cylinder and placed inside the coffin, along with other items including Vatican coins minted during his reign, said Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni.
Benedict, 95, died Saturday after 10 years in an extraordinary papal retirement lived out in a monastery in the Vatican Gardens. Pope Francis will celebrate the funeral Mass in St. Peter’s Square on Thursday.
Although the Vatican has stressed that Benedict wanted “simplicity” to characterize his funeral, Bruni said the liturgy will “in great detail be that of pontifical ceremonies … with some original elements.”
After the public viewing concludes at 7 p.m. (1800 GMT) on Wednesday, “the coffin will be closed, with a special rite,″ Bruni said. Benedict’s body will be placed in a coffin hewn from cypress, then put into a zinc coffin that will be sealed in a second wooden casket.
It will be brought out of the basilica and into the square about 40 minutes before Thursday’s funeral, as the crowd gathered for the service recites the rosary for Benedict, who served as pontiff from April 2005 through February 2013.
Vatican security estimated about 65,000 people filed past the bier on Monday and 70,000 had done so on Tuesday. Two influential U.S. churchmen, Cardinals Timothy Dolan of New York and Sean Patrick O’Malley of Boston, attended Mass in the basilica at an altar just behind the central viewing area on the second day.
