THE VATICAN
Miserando atque eligendo―“by having mercy, by choosing”. It was Papa Francesco’s episcopal motto.
I am writing this in the early hours of Sunday, back home in San Romano―still crackling from yesterday’s road-run-train-jog-funeral-run-drive odyssey to Rome.
I have witnessed historic moments before―JFK’s funeral in ’63, the moon landing in ’69, the Cuban missile crisis jitters, 9/11 in New York, Vietnam bomber flights over Malaya, a lifetime of sporting epics―but I knew there was no way I could miss Francesco’s farewell.
“Don’t cry for me, Argentina,” kept running through my head.
I had to be there. I had to witness this.
Friday late afternoon―Lucca to San Romano
After test-driving the VW California Beach around Lucca―dreaming of September trips―I attended Valéria’s birthday bash, then loaded up my VW Golf GTD: running kit, duvet, snacks, moleskin and pencil.
The Via Aurelia was waiting―the ancient Roman road stretching from Lucca to Rome, once trodden by legions before Christ was born.
The Tuscan hills fell away to the coastal spray: Pisa, Livorno, Cecina, Civitavecchia.
Then inland again, chasing Rome under a soft, fading sun.
Love and prayers: A girl holds a picture of Pope Francis as she waits for his coffin to arrive at Santa Maria Maggiore | Reuters
Friday night―Muratella station “camp”
By 10pm, I drove into the Muratella station car park.
Back seats down, duvet over me―nothing new after Ruta 40, Argentina―but this time it was the Golf’s hum and distant trains that lulled me into half-sleep.
My mind raced ahead to tomorrow.
Saturday dawn―an alert Rome and the early train
Something was different in the air.
The same sense of foreboding I remembered from old political thrillers like The Day of the Jackal swept through Rome.
Security was everywhere: soldiers, cameras, snipers.
I saw a soldier outside a religious goods shop, brandishing a bazooka-like anti-drone device.
Asked if it could force rogue drones to land, he shrugged: “Maybe… among other things.”
A single tomato, I thought, could start a chain of unfortunate events.
At 5am, on went the Ron Hill tracksuit bottoms, sweatshirt, cap, small rucksack―and I caught the 6am train: Muratella → Termini → Vatican shuttle (pro tip: day-pass!).
Jog to St Peter’s.
A man pays his respects on the day of Pope Francis’s funeral | Reuters
Blessed weather
First light found me pounding the banks of the Tiber: Piazza Cavour, Ponte Sant’Angelo, Castel Sant’Angelo―all blurring past stray cats and dawn joggers.
My bluetooth pacemaker (“Lady Muck”) hummed along. Adrenaline, memory, anticipation fused.
Last time I ran this route, I heard about Michael Jackson’s death―’Thriller’ and ‘Billie Jean’ ghosted into my mind again, no need for AirPods or my long-lost Sony Walkman.
Under an Argentinian blue sky, I whispered: “Good day to be in Italy.”
St Peter’s Square―the funeral mass
I couldn’t enter the square―it was already full―but I didn’t mind.
I found a café nearby, ordered an espresso, and watched alongside thousands. You could feel Papa everywhere.
You didn’t need a golden ticket.
Every inch of Rome breathed him.
Just before 10am, the simple wooden coffin―sealed with zinc, as Papa had asked―rested before the multitudes.
Purple-robed cardinals, white-mitred bishops, priests and faithful from every continent filled the square.
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re led the mass, the first of nine novemdiales.
Readings flowed: Acts, Paul’s letters, John’s Gospel.
Prayers rose in French, Arabic, Portuguese, Polish, German, Chinese.
The Sistine Chapel Choir’s hymns echoed off Bernini’s massive colonnades.
The bells tolled across a sea of white: clergy, pilgrims, strangers together.
The entrance antiphon rolled out, soft and reverential.
People and politics
By a quirk of French alphabetical chance, Trump sat near the front―Macron, Zelensky and other world leaders close by.
It amused me. Here, in a sea of humility, the grandstanders had nowhere to hide.
No golden thrones. No sycophantic parades.
Only a shepherd’s farewell.
Around me, I heard murmurs: “He lived simply. He paid his own way.”
No jet-set accounts. No golden lifts. No walls.
Francis built bridges, not barriers.
When the cardinal recalled Francis’s first trip to Lampedusa―standing with refugees who had crossed raging seas―the square broke into applause.
When he spoke of the mass at the US-Mexico border, the clapping grew louder.
A standing ovation without the standing.
“Build bridges, not walls,” Battista said again.
Torch of hope―the homily
The homily wasn’t dry or bureaucratic.
It was a love letter to simplicity, humanity, mercy.
A sermon for the underdogs.
Mercy was Francis’s cornerstone. Fraternity was his signature. It was a luminous rebuke to the hard-hearted strongmen who build walls that divide.
The phrase kept coming back to me: “The gift of the stranger―there sits our salvation.”
This wasn’t merely a funeral.
It was a revolution of the spirit.
Procession to Santa Maria Maggiore
After the final commendation, the simple coffin began its slow journey: from St Peter’s, along Via della Conciliazione, around Piazza Navona’s ruins, and up Esquilino Hill. Santa Maria Maggiore stood waiting―one of the oldest Marian churches in Christendom.
Here, early in his papacy, Jorge Mario Bergoglio had slipped in unannounced, almost pick-pocketed, just another soul needing prayer.
Now he came home, with the whole world watching.
Inside, psalms and antiphons rose. Forty marginalised migrants, prisoners, homeless and transgender individuals carrying white roses bore the coffin into the basilica in a powerful final testament to his legacy.
The casket was sealed into its resting place, and sprinkled with holy water, as the Camerlengo placed the final seal.
By 2pm, it was done.
Return jog, train and homebound drive I slipped away.
Jogged back along the river. Caught the shuttle back to Muratella.
Back in the Golf GTD, I pointed north―autostrada to Firenze, then Lucca, before climbing the winding hills of the Garfagnana under a bright moon and clear sky, with Ennio Morricone’s Once Upon a Time in the West playing through the sound system.
Fatigue and exhilaration fought it out as the Golf hummed homeward.
Early Sunday morning―San Romano
Just after midnight, I pulled into San Romano.
The olive and chestnut trees stood silent under the Apuan moonlight.
The Golf GTD, my faithful chariot, rested outside my house overlooking Parco dell’Orecchiella.
A cold shower. A leap into bed. A swirl of thoughts: Francis, buried simply, in a basilica he loved, among the poor he never forgot.
Closing thoughts
There was plenty of live TV coverage, of course.
But as a farmer client once told me in Hawes, Yorkshire, while walking his land: “There’s nothing like walking it yourself.”
No screen could carry the smell of flowers in the air, the shuffle of pilgrims’ feet, the sweat of bodies under the Roman sun, the feeling of being there, part of the story.
No room for Trump in my heart that night.
No room for geopolitics.
Only peace and a sense of having made a good effort.
Buona sera, as Papa Francesco first uttered to the world in 2013, when the white smoke rose from the Sistine chimney.
St Francis of Assisi and Pope Francis of Argentina have met once more, joining Jesus on the road home.
The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.