Lockered Gahs, known unofficially as Bud, was a 20-year-old soldier in the U.S. Army who had been fighting for a year when he and his unit first entered the Dachau concentration camp just outside Munich in 1945. His unit — the 42nd Infantry Division — had seen harrowing combat since it began fighting in France….
The arrangements for the funeral of Pope Francis were meticulous, and the ceremony drew a global audience. But it is the arrangement of the letters on his tombstone that are now attracting outsize attention. The simple slab has only 10 letters, but the spacing between them can make it read like “F R A NCISC…
In a solemn and majestic funeral on the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica, the Roman Catholic Church on Saturday laid to rest Pope Francis, the first South American pope, whose simple style, pastoral vision and outsize footprint on the world stage both reinvigorated and divided the institution that he led for a dozen years. Heads…
Some mourners had spent the night sleeping in the streets near the Vatican, and they started lining up at dawn on Saturday in St. Peter’s Square to bid farewell to Pope Francis. Hours later, world leaders took their seats in rows near an altar set up in front of St. Peter’s Basilica. The scene was…
By plane and boat, on foot and in an electric popemobile, Pope Francis traveled year after year of his papacy, reaching dozens of countries on five continents. His first official trip outside Rome was in 2013 to Lampedusa, a tiny Mediterranean island that had became a gateway for migrants. Not long afterward, he flew into…
President Trump, it seems, is fully committed to going his own way when it comes to international relations — even during the funeral of a pope. On Saturday, as he joined other world leaders to pay his respects to Pope Francis, he stood in St. Peter’s Square among President Emmanuel Macron of France (who was…
Before thousands lined up for a momentary glimpse of Pope Francis’ body and a chance to pay their respects, one elderly nun stood facing the pontiff’s coffin, bidding a tearful farewell to her longtime friend. A video captured the last tender moments Sister Geneviève Jeanningros shared with the man with whom she was known to…
Priests, pilgrims and cardinals dressed in black robes and red sashes mixed in the streets of the Vatican on Thursday as tens of thousands of Catholics paid their respects to Pope Francis and preparations for his funeral accelerated. The church also released the first image of the pope’s tomb — a simple, undecorated affair in…
Francis set the stage for his own mourning late last year, when he approved a simplified procedure for papal funeral rituals. Simplicity, of course, is relative — in this case to the breathtaking grandeur bequeathed by centuries of Roman Catholic tradition. The procession above took place Wednesday morning, when Francis’ coffin was carried from the…
Mourners will bid a final farewell to Pope Francis on Saturday during his funeral Mass, which is expected to draw international leaders as well as cardinals, archbishops and priests from around the world to the Vatican. The rites will be broadcast by news networks around the globe. Until the funeral, his body, dressed in papal…