Funeral Mass for Benedict XVI: "It was a beautiful, quiet funeral"

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Funeral Mass in St. Peter's Square for the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

Around 50,000 people came to pay their last respects to Joseph Ratzinger, who was born in Bavaria.

Time-lapse recordings show how the central square in the Vatican was already filling up in the early morning.

Among the participants in the funeral service were numerous state guests, such as Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Georgia Meloni.

Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder, among others, traveled from Germany.

Also believers from all over the world.

"We are a Catholic fraternity, from Regensburg, and Cardinal Ratzinger was a member of our fraternity, so later Pope Benedict."

“It is a sad but meaningful day for me.

I wanted to be here so badly that I can feel it in my heart.«

'I felt I had to come here even though I had other plans today.

I said to myself that I must come here and attend Holy Mass to accompany him in prayer.”

'It was a nice, quiet funeral, a very heartfelt funeral, and historic too because there were two popes involved.

Besides, I was here the day he was elected.”

Benedict XVI

died in the Vatican on New Year's Eve at the age of 95.

He was the head of the Roman Catholic Church from 2005 until his resignation in 2013.

The funeral mass for Benedict was new ceremonial territory for the Catholic Church, because with him a pope emeritus had died for the first time in centuries and therefore no successor had to be elected.

Benedict XVI

is now laid to rest in the crypt of St. Peter's Basilica.

In the past few days, almost 200,000 people had said goodbye to him in the cathedral.