The funeral ceremony began at 10:00 a.m. local time (1:30 p.m. IST) in the historic Baroque square in front of St. Peter’s Basilica. Before the service, his body was placed in a cypress-wood coffin, which will later be enclosed within two additional coffins made of different types of wood, each nesting within the other, for his final burial.
In the Lombardy region of Italy, where the pandemic first erupted in the West, a hospital gave a traditional dove-shaped Easter cake symbolising peace to each person waiting to get vaccinated.
