KAMI sertakan di sini teks lengkap terjemahan dari bahasa Itali ke bahasa Inggris isi dan pesan homili yang disampaikan oleh Kardinal Re selaku Kepala Dewan Cardinal saat memimpin misa requiem dan prosesi pemakaman Paus Fransiskus.
Who is Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re? He was born in Borno, Italy on January 30, 1934. He was ordained a priest in Brescia in 1957.
Giovanni was a professor at the Brescia seminary and graduated with a doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical Gregorian. He then joined the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in 1961 to train for a career in diplomacy. He joined the Roman Curia in 1963, marking the start of his career at the Vatican City.
According to the Holy See Press Office, he worked as a personal assistant to Archbishop Giovanni Benelli after serving on missions in Panama and Iran. He served as the Substitute for General Affairs of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State for over ten years, overseeing the day-to-day activities of the Holy See.
In 2001, he was elevated to the rank of Cardinal.
From 2020, Cardinal Giovanni has been the Dean of the College of Cardinals – a body of the highest ranking members of the Catholic Church who, in a secretive process known as a papal conclave, elect a new pope. However, only those under 80 years participate in the secret voting which means Cardinal Giovanni will be excluded.
Giovanni presided over the Pope’s funeral on April 26, 2025. Cardinal Battista said Francis was “a Pope among the people, with an open heart towards everyone”.
The Cardinal said: “He established direct contact with individuals and peoples, eager to be close to everyone, with a marked attention to those in difficulty, giving himself without measure, especially to the marginalised, the least among us.”
The Pope’s funeral is expected to draw world leaders and thousands of mourners from around the globe.
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Cardinal Re’s homily
In this majestic Saint Peter’s Square, where Pope Francis many times celebrated the Eucharist and presided over great ongoing large meetings over these 12 years, but supported by faith, it assures us of the Father’s worthiness in a life of happiness that will know no sunset.
On behalf of the College of Cardinals, I greet and thank all present with varying intensity of feeling.
A greeting and a lively thank you to the numerous heads of state, heads of government, and official delegations from numerous countries to express affection, veneration, and esteem for the Pope who has left us.
The plebiscite of manifestation of affection and participation that we all saw on this passage says how intense the pontificate was and how much his word touched minds and hearts.
Pope Francis’ last public appearance
His last image that will remain in our eyes and hearts is that of last Sunday 20 April 2025, the solemnity of Easter. Despite serious health problems, Pope Francis wanted to impart the blessing from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica and then wanted to come down into this square to greet the entire large crowd gathered for Easter from the open Popemobile.
With our prayer, we now want to entrust the soul of the beloved pontiff to God so that He may grant him eternal happiness. The luminous and glorious horizon of His immense love illuminates and guides us.
Jesus and his disciple Peter
The page of the Gospel in which the very voice of God resounded: “You are mine.” And Peter’s response was ready and sincere: “Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you.”
And Jesus entrusted him with the mission: “feed my sheep.”
This will be the constant task of Peter and his successors, a service of love in the footsteps of our master and Lord Jesus Christ.
Despite his final fragility and suffering, Pope Francis chose to follow this path of self-giving until the last day of his earthly life. He followed the footsteps of his good shepherd, his sheep, to give for them, and he did so with strength and serenity.
Pope’s past life
The Church, when Cardinal Bergoglio was elected by the conclave on March 13, 2013, to succeed Pope Benedict XVI, had behind him years of religious life in the Society of Jesus and, above all, had gained experience from 21 years of pastoral ministry in the Diocese of Buenos Aires, first as auxiliary bishop and then as archbishop.
The decision to take the name Francis immediately appeared as the choice of a program and a style on which he wanted to base his pontificate, seeking to be inspired by the spirit of Saint Francis of Assisi.
Close contact with others
Pope Francis always preserved his temperament and his form of pastoral guidance, and immediately imprinted his strong personality on the government of the Church, having direct contact with individuals and populations, eager to be close to everyone, with marked attention to people in difficulty, spending himself without measure, particularly for the last of the earth, the marginalized.
- He was a pope among the people with an open heart towards everyone.
- Moreover, he was a Pope attentive to the new things emerging in society and to what the Holy Spirit was stirring up in the vocabulary characteristic of him, with his language rich in images and metaphors, to illuminate parts of the Gospel, the problems of our time, offering a response in the light of faith and encouraging Christians to live as Christians and the contradictions of these years.
Changes that he loved to qualify as a change of era. He had great spontaneity and an informal manner even towards people far away, rich in human warmth and deeply sensitive to today’s dramas.
He truly shared the anxieties and hopes of our time and gave himself to comforting and encouraging with a message capable of reaching people’s hearts directly and immediately.
His charisma of welcome and listening, combined with a way of behaving characteristic of the sensitivity of the day, touched hearts, aiming to awaken moral and spiritual energies. The primacy of evangelization was the guide of his pontificate with a clear missionary imprint.
The Joy of the Gospel, which was also the title of his first apostolic exhortation Evangelio Gabriel. A joy that, as trust and hope, the heart of those God, conductor of his mission, has also been one who is a home for all, a home with doors always open.
He often used the image of the Church as a field hospital after a battle in which many were wounded. A church desirous of caring with determination for the problems of people and the great anxieties that exacerbate the contemporary world. A church capable of bending down to every man, beyond every creed and conviction, healing their wounds.
Strong compassion with migrants and refugees
Innumerable are his gestures and exhortations in favor of refugees and the poor. His commitment was also evident in working for the poor.
Pope Francis’ first journey is significant; it is significant that it was to Lampedusa, a symbol of the drama of the emergency with thousands, with thousands of people drowned at sea.
Along the same lines was also the journey to Lesbos together with the Patriarch and the Archbishop of Athens, as well as the celebration of a mass at the border between Mexico and the United States on the occasion of his journey to Mexico.
His 47 tiring apostolic journeys will remain in history, particularly the one to Iraq in 2021, undertaken defying every risk at that moment.
The difficult apostolic visit was a balm on the open wounds of the Iraqi population who had suffered so much from the inhuman work of.
This was an important journey also for interreligious dialogue, another relevant dimension of his pastoral work. With the apostolic visit in 2024 to four nations in Asia, Oceania, and Oceania, the Pope reached the most peripheral periphery of the world.
Misericordia
Pope Francis always placed the Gospel of Mercy at the center, repeatedly emphasizing that God does not tire of forgiving; He forgives whatever the situation of someone who asks for forgiveness and returns to the right path.
And for this, he immediately wanted the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, stating that mercy is the heart of the Gospel. Mercy and the Joy of the Gospel are two key words.
Speaking in contrast with what he called the culture of waste, he spoke of the culture, the culture of solidarity. The theme of fraternity then crossed his entire pontificate.
With the encyclical letter Fratelli Tutti, he wanted to reawaken a worldwide aspiration to fraternity. All children of the same Father who is in heaven. He recalled that we all belong to the same human family and that no one saves themselves alone.
In 2019, during the journey to the United Arab Emirates, Pope Francis signed the Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together,
- recalling the common fatherhood of God;
- addressing men and women of the whole world.
With the encyclical, he drew attention to the duties and responsibilities regarding the common home.
Thoughts over war
Faced with the raging of so many wars in these years, with inhuman horrors and innumerable deaths and destructions, Pope Francis incessantly raised his voice, imploring for peace, inviting, inviting to reasonableness, inviting to honest negotiation to find possible solutions.
That is, he said about war: war is only the death of people, destruction of homes, destruction of hospitals and schools.
War always leaves the world worse than it was before. It is always for everyone a painful and tragic defeat. Building bridges and not walls is an exhortation that he repeated several times.
The service of faith as successor of the Apostle Peter was always combined with the service of man in his dimensions, in spiritual union with all of Christianity. We are numerous here to pray for Pope Francis so that God may welcome him into the immensity of his love.
Please pray also for me
Francis wanted to conclude his speeches and also his contributions by saying: “Don’t forget to pray for me”.
Now, dear Pope Francis, we ask you to pray for us, and we ask you to bless the Church, bless Rome, bless the whole world from heaven, as you did last Sunday from the balcony of this basilica in a final embrace with all the people of God, but ideally also with all of humanity, with humanity that seeks the truth with a sincere heart and holds high the torch of hope.
Read more: Ordo Exsequiarum Romani Pontificis (22)
