5, January 2023
Pope Francis presides over funeral of predecessor Benedict XVI 0
Pope Francis led the funeral of his predecessor Benedict XVI on Thursday in front of tens of thousands of mourners in St Peter’s Square, an event unprecedented in modern times.
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 aged 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.
An estimated 50,000 people were in the square for the funeral, according to police, 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,” said Cristina Grisanti, a 59-year-old from Milan, who hailed the former pope’s “purity, his candour, his mildness”.
An estimated 195,000 people had already paid their respects earlier when the body lay in state.
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,” said Benedikt Rothweiler, 34, who came from Aachen with his family.
“We actually know too little about Benedict. He always accepted everything the way God wants it. This is a good example for us humans.”
Two popes
Benedict was a brilliant theologian but a divisive figure who alienated many Catholics with his staunch defence of conservative doctrine on issues such as abortion.
His eight years as head of the worldwide Catholic Church was also marked by crises, from in-fighting within the Vatican to the global scandal of clerical sex abuse and its cover-up.
When he quit, Benedict said he no longer had the “strength of mind and body” necessary for the task, retiring to a quiet life in a monastery in the Vatican gardens.
His death brought an end to an unprecedented situation of having two “men in white” — he and Francis — living in the tiny city state.
He and Francis, an Argentine Jesuit, were said to get on well, but Benedict’s later interventions meant he stayed a standard-bearer for conservative Catholics who did not like his successor’s more liberal stance.
The last time a pope presided over the funeral of his predecessor was in 1802, when Pius VII led the ceremony for Pius VI — but the circumstances were very different.
Pius VI died in 1799 in exile, a prisoner of France, and was buried in Valence. His successor had his remains exhumed and brought back to Italy, before he was treated to a papal funeral at St Peter’s.
European royals
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.
“This is an unexplainable feeling to witness this,” said Cherry Castro, 67, who was among around 500 gathered for the special ceremony.
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.
But 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.
Source: AFP
5, January 2023
Harry says in new book William attacked him, branded Meghan ‘difficult’ 0
Prince Harry recounts in his new book how he was physically attacked by his older brother Prince William during an argument over his wife Meghan, according to an excerpt leaked days before the memoir’s publication.
In the latest salvo in the brothers’ bitter feud, Harry says the alleged incident came after the heir to the British throne called Meghan “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive”.
Details of the row come as the British royal family braces for the publication on Tuesday of Harry’s book “Spare”.
The undignified spat in 2019 — the year after Harry and Meghan married — allegedly saw William tackle his younger brother to the ground as they continued to argue.
“He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor. I landed on the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me,” The Guardian newspaper quoted Harry’s book as saying.
Harry then told his older brother to leave. William looked “regretful, and apologised”, Harry recalled, according to the left-leaning daily, which last year questioned the monarchy’s role in modern Britain.
‘Harold’
Quoting from the exchange between the two princes in the book, the report said William turned and called back: “You don’t need to tell Meg about this.”
“You mean that you attacked me?” said Harry.
“I didn’t attack you, Harold,” William responded, seeming to use a nickname for his brother.
The revelation follows a string of other broadsides in the wake of Harry and Meghan’s decision to quit royal duties in Britain in early 2020.
A year after starting their new life in California in 2020, the couple told US chat show host Oprah Winfrey that Buckingham Palace failed to help Meghan when she felt suicidal and accused an unidentified member of the royal family of racism.
And in a Netflix docuseries aired last month they blamed William’s office for negative coverage, claiming it briefed the media against them.
Buckingham Palace has not made any public response to the claims, although Harry’s late grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, said about the racism allegations that “recollections may vary” and promised an investigation.
William also snapped at a reporter who asked about the claims: “We are very much not a racist family.”
Britain is gearing up for the coronation of Harry’s father, King Charles III, in May following the death of the queen last year.
Harry, 38, was asked in an ITV interview to be aired on Sunday evening if he will attend the event but he dodged the question.
“There’s a lot that can happen between now and then,” he said in a new clip released on Thursday.
“The ball is in their court. There’s a lot to be discussed. And I really hope that they are willing to sit down and talk about it,” he says.
Shared grief
Harry and William previously enjoyed a close relationship, in part forged by their shared grief over the loss of their mother, Princess Diana, who died in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
As young boys, the pair provided the enduring image from the funeral, walking behind Diana’s coffin.
Asked by interviewer Tom Bradby, a friend of both brothers, if “William might say ‘How could you do this to me… after everything we went through?'”, Harry responds tersely that William would “probably say all sorts of different things”.
The former British Army captain adds that he still believes in the monarchy although he does not know if he will play any part in its future.
Responding to a question about invading his own family’s privacy, having railed against the media for doing the same thing, he says: “That would be the accusation from the people who don’t understand or don’t want to believe that my family have been briefing the press.”
In excerpts released earlier, Harry said he wanted “a family, not an institution”.
“I would like to get my father back. I would like to get my brother back,” he said.
Source: AFP