Cardinals pay their respects to Pope Francis inside St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, where his body will lie in state for three days, April 23, 2025. ANDREW MEDICHINI/POOL/AFP/Getty

Pope Francis' funeral has been scheduled for 10 a.m. local time (4 a.m. eastern) on Saturday in front of St. Peter's Basilica, the Vatican announced Tuesday, following a meeting of the College of Cardinals at the Catholic Church's city-state headquarters in the heart of Rome. The coffin carrying the pope, who died Monday morning after suffering a stroke and heart failure at the age of 88, was brought in a procession on Wednesday morning to the basilica from his residence at Casa Santa Marta, where he died.

The late pontiff will lie in state inside St. Peter's Basilica for three days ahead of his funeral, with the faithful processing slowly up to his simple wooden coffin to pay their respects.

A steady stream of cardinals, the most senior prelates in the Catholic Church, were the first to file up to Francis' coffin on Wednesday.

The cardinals were followed by thousands of mourners from every walk of life, many waiting four hours or longer to see the pope's body.

"It gave me chills," Ivenes Bianco, from southern Italy, told The Associated Press as she left the basilica. She said she was in Rome for medical care but felt compelled to come and pay her respects.

"He was important to me because he encouraged co-existence," she told the AP. "He brought many people together.''

On Tuesday, the Vatican released the first photos and video of Francis since his death, showing him in his coffin wearing a red robe with the papal mitre on his head and a rosary intertwined in his hands.

The images showed cardinals and other church officials performing what the Vatican said was the formal Confirmation of the Pope's Death and praying over his body.

CBS News correspondent Seth Doane said the intimate service at the Santa Marta hotel on Tuesday gave senior clergy and Vatican insiders a private chance to pay their respects to Francis ahead of the more public lying in state at St. Peter's.

Church officials also shared some details on Tuesday about the pope's final hours, describing "a discreet death, almost sudden, without long suffering or public alarm."

The interim administrator of the Vatican, Irish-American Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who will play a major role in the funeral and subsequent events in the coming weeks, presided over the Wednesday morning procession to St. Peter's and the ritual transfer of the pope's body to the basilica.

The funeral Mass will be celebrated on Saturday morning by the dean of the College of Cardinals, Giovanni Battista Re. The papal funeral is broken down into three separate phases, or "stations." They are the preparation of the body, the viewing of the body, and then the burial.

Who will come to Pope Francis' funeral?
The funeral at St. Peter's Basilica on Saturday will draw "Patriarchs, Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, and priests from across the globe," the Vatican said. It will also be attended by a number of world leaders and other dignitaries.

President Trump said Monday that he and first lady Melania would attend, as did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and France's Emmanuel Macron. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was to attend, along with a number of other European heads of state, including U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Germany's outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Among the first royals to confirm they will attend the funeral were King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of Belgium. The country's official Belga News agency confirmed that they would attend, noting the royal couple' social media post on Monday in which they honored Francis as, "a great man, close to the most vulnerable and concerned with the problems of the world."

King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain were also planning to be at the funeral, the French news agency AFP said Tuesday, citing the royal palace in Madrid.

Kensington Palace said Tuesday that William, the Prince of Wales and heir to the British throne, would attend the pope's funeral on behalf of the U.K. royals, representing his father King Charles III. Charles, along with Queen Camilla, met with Francis at the Vatican less than two weeks before the pontiff died.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin, who is currently the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant over war crimes allegedly committed during his country's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, will not attend the pope's funeral, the Kremlin's chief spokesman said Tuesday.

"No. The president has no such plans," spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about Francis' funeral. The ICC warrant severely limits Putin's ability to travel internationally, as any nation that's a signatory to the U.N. court's founding charter is legally obligated to arrest him if he enters its territory.

The Reuters news agency said Brazil's President Luis Inacio da Silva and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had also confirmed that they would attend the funeral. President Javier Milei of Argentina, where Francis was born in 1936, would also be at the funeral, according to his office.

China's government indicated Tuesday that no decisions had been made regarding which officials might attend the service at the Vatican.

What happens after Pope Francis' funeral?
After the funeral Mass at St. Peter's, Pope Francis' coffin will be taken to the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome, where he will be entombed. The pope chose to be buried at the smaller basilica, which is about four miles away, outside the Vatican walls. He prayed at St. Mary's often, before and after international trips during his 12-year pontificate.

Between 15 and 20 days after the pope's death, the Cardinal Electors will gather at the Vatican and seal themselves off from the world behind the doors of the Sistine Chapel for the papal conclave, the centuries-old process of choosing the next pope. Only cardinals under the age of 80 — currently a group of about 135 — are eligible to vote in a conclave.

The meeting of the cardinals on Tuesday was the first in what will be a series of gatherings culminating with the conclave. John Allen, editor of the Catholic news website "Crux," told CBS News that the cardinals who were already at the Vatican to attend Tuesday's meeting would soon be joined by others from around the world.

"The really important part of these meetings begin when cardinals begin giving programmatic talks about where they believe the church stands … and what the profile of the man is needed to carry it forward," Allen told CBS News about the process leading up to the conclave.

"Let's be clear: These are not the Iowa Caucuses. Nobody's going to be standing up, barnstorming on behalf of their preferred candidate," he said, adding that one can, however, "read between the lines" of the addresses delivered by the cardinals "to figure out, he's probably talking about cardinal so-and-so, or he may be talking against cardinal, so-in-so. … So this is as close to political sausage grinding as we're going to get in the process electing the next pope."

For the actual conclave, the cardinals will cast ballots inside the Sistine Chapel, out of public view, for their choice to lead the church, repeating the process until a candidate emerges with a two-thirds-plus-one majority. The paper ballots are burned after each round of voting, sending up black smoke to signal no choice has been reached yet, and finally white smoke to reveal that a new pope has been selected.


Graphic by IOANA PLESEADAVID LORY/AFP via Getty Images

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