Popes can expect to have elaborate, highly ritualized funerals. But it's
safe to say none of them banked on popping in their coffin, rotting in plain sight,
or being dug up, dressed up, and put on trial.
While popes can dictate some details of their funeral ahead of time, the force of history is
pretty strong when it comes to papal send-offs. And most popes go with long-held traditions.
A pope's body will be dressed in religious garb he would have worn during life. It's
then placed inside three coffins. First, he would be placed in a simple wooden one. The
second coffin would be a fancier one made of zinc. This coffin would be hermetically sealed,
and have his name and the dates of his reign engraved on the surface. Finally,
the second coffin would be placed inside another wooden coffin. The whole assembly is placed
beneath a marble slab or, in the case of some pontiffs, inside an entire marble sarcophagus.
Those aren't the only rituals closely followed in the wake of a pope's death. The Vatican observes a
9-day mourning period that's linked to ancient Roman custom. It typically involves a public
viewing. The funeral itself must be held between the fourth and sixth day after the pontiff dies,
though it's unclear why. After the service in St. Peter's Basilica, the pontifical coffin is carried
out through the ominously named "door of death" for its final internment beneath the church.
According to the church, after death, the popes' bodies may be preserved for "possible future
veneration." Though the term is carefully vague, many interpret it as the collection
of holy relics from the remains of previous pontiffs. Relics, after all, have proven to
be a pretty big spiritual business throughout the church's history. These relics are believed to be
a direct physical connection to a saint and can be drawn from any number of body parts,
from St. Anthony's tongue to St. Catherine's head to even the bones of the first pope, St. Peter.
"It's more than just reading about him. It's something that's still
physically present. Like it's literally his arm."
This may be why Pope Benedict XVI, who famously resigned from his post in 2013, learned that his
organ donor card was no longer accepted. Federico Lombardi, the chief spokesman for the Vatican,
claimed it had nothing to do with the possibility that Benedict's future remains would be reserved
for relic collection if he were declared a saint, but that did little to dispel the theory.
That being said, stolen relics certainly happened before. On multiple occasions,
relics from Pope John Paul II, who was made a saint in 2014, were stolen. One
relic was a piece of the blood-stained robe he had been wearing during a 1981
assassination attempt. Another was a vial of blood collected towards the end of his life,
which was stolen from its resting place in Spoleto, Italy in 2020.
People really, really loved Pope John XXIII. They loved him so much to the point where he
became known as the "good pope" for his welcoming nature and relatively
liberal attitudes. He was the pope who convened the Second Vatican Council,
which sought to bring Catholicism in line with more modern ideals.
"He moved the church furniture around and took Latin down a peg in favor of regular language."
Given how much people venerated John XXIII despite his short reign from 1958 to 1963,
it's no wonder that there was soon talk of impending sainthood. He was linked to a nun's
disappearing stomach tumor, for one. And when his tomb was opened in 2001, his remains were in
extraordinarily good condition. Cardinal Virgilio Noè was even quoted by Reuters saying that,
"It was as if he died yesterday."
However, the church has remained skeptical about incorruptibility. ABC News reported
that John XXIII's remains weren't embalmed but had been treated with formalin for public
viewing. Whereas the Irish Times goes so far as to say that he was "heavily embalmed,"
while the Vatican reminded everyone that John XXIII's remains were also hermetically sealed
inside multiple coffins. Nevertheless, the pope's remains were put on display in 2001
in a glass-sided coffin for public viewing. The Los Angeles Times also notes that the body was
outfitted with a wax mask made from a casting of the pope's face made just after his death.
The Catholic Church doesn't have an official policy regarding whether or not a pope's remains
should be embalmed. However, a number of recent popes have been fully embalmed after their deaths,
including all four popes preceding John Paul II. The embalming process requires removing
nearly all blood and other bodily fluids from the remains and replacing them with a
preservative solution that contains dye meant to give the body a more lifelike appearance.
But John Paul II appears to have not been fully embalmed. According to the Vatican,
his body was only "prepared" for a public viewing. This vague statement leaves room
for interpretation, but it's likely that the pope's body was given some
sort of preservative treatment to keep it in a presentable state.
After all, Pope John Paul II died in 2005, when reporters and news cameras
could broadcast any issues spotted during the public viewing, as thousands of people were
filing past his remains. While some visitors reported telltale signs of deterioration,
it appears that whatever was done to Pope John Paul II's remains worked
far better for him than for other popes who experienced similar preparations.
In theory, a final resting place should be truly final, but that's not always the case.
Within the Catholic Church, a pope may not rest in a single spot forever. For example,
if a pope is the subject of a sainthood cause, their body may be removed from its burial
place multiple times over the decades. Vatican officials may want to exhume a
pope's remains for public veneration or to inspect the remains for signs of sainthood.
Consider the remains of St. John Paul II. Before he was officially canonized in 2014, his body was
removed from the crypt of Saint Peter's Basilica and placed back in front of the church's main
altar. With beatification achieved, the coffin went into a new burial spot in a nearby chapel,
with the marble topper from his old sarcophagus sent to the pontiff's home country of Poland.
Though much is made of the ancient and storied traditions that are part of life in the Vatican,
things can and indeed do change. Sometimes, these changes are sweeping, even monumental,
like those enacted by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Vatican II, as it's often called,
loosened rules for some religious order members and allowed for mass to
be held in local languages and not just Latin. This was controversial and some
conservative members of the church continue to complain about the changes even today.
Then again, sometimes changes to traditions seem small, but have big consequences later.
Take Pope Pius X, who died in 1914, and refused to allow embalmers to remove his
internal organs and preserve them in separate jars. This was a well-established practice
at the time, and had been enacted in the wake of previous popes' deaths.
But Pius X thought it nothing short of grotesque, and his successors seemed to agree. Yet, where
the body of Pius X seems to have suffered no great damage from remaining intact, other popes' bodies,
with quickly deteriorating organs still inside them, wouldn't be so fortunate.
No one seems to know why Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi was put in charge of
embalming the pope. The scheming, incompetent personal doctor of Pius XII wasn't a figure
who inspired confidence. In fact, it was eventually revealed that he was
behind the deathbed photos of the pontiff that were leaked to the press in 1958.
The embalming was a disaster, not least because Galeazzi-Lisi was a quack who'd
made promises he simply couldn't keep. Together with another presumably incompetent surgeon,
he had developed an "aromatic osmosis" method that had supposedly been used by
the ancients. It basically required that someone dress the body in various oils,
then wrap it in a sheet of plastic, with no injections or incisions.
The process did absolutely nothing to slow down the decay of the remains. Ultimately it produced
smells so bad that members of the Swiss Guard reportedly fainted while standing guard around
the coffin. Even worse, the pope's remains were so bloated with gasses produced by decomposition that
they popped inside his coffin during his funeral procession. Galeazzi-Lisi and associates hastily
re-embalmed the remains, but it was still pretty awful. Some even reported that Pius XII's remains
had turned a lurid "emerald green" because of Galeazzi-Lisi's lackluster ministrations.
While there's plenty to shake one's head at when it comes to relic hunting and experimental
embalming, nothing measures up to the infamous Cadaver Synod. It essentially began in 897 CE,
when Pope Stephen VI decided that his predecessor, Pope Formosus,
had committed a great sin. Formosus had once been a pretty powerful bishop. In fact,
Pope John VIII was so worried about his influence that he had Formosus excommunicated.
"We declare him excommunicate and anathema. We cast him into the outer darkness."
John was eventually killed and his successor reinstated Formosus,
who managed to snag his own spot as pontiff for five years before dying. By this time,
the papal throne had a pretty high turnover rate, and anyone sitting there was bound to be nervous.
So, Stephen VI held a trial for the late Formosus, whom he believed had broken some
key rules when he became pope. Stephen had his predecessor's remains exhumed,
dressed in liturgical robes, placed in a chair, and tried.
Being dead, Formosus was unable to defend himself against the charges
and was quickly found guilty. His remains were unceremoniously tossed in Rome's Tiber River,
where a fisherman pulled the body out of the water. Formosus' remains were soon linked
to reports of miracles. Stephen, however, was unsurprisingly felled by an uprising,
after which the body of Formosus was reinstalled in a tomb beneath St. Peter's Basilica.
When it comes to popes, Saint Peter is kind of a big deal. It's not only that
he was an original apostle of Jesus and, in fact,
the head honcho of the 12 apostles. There's also the matter that, according to Christian tradition,
Peter was the first-ever pope. Like so many early Christian saints, legend has it that
Peter met a gruesome end, crucified upside down by authorities under Roman Emperor Nero.
This means that any relics recovered from the mortal remains of Saint Peter would be
pretty highly venerated by the faithful. Yet, while bones that reportedly belong
to Peter have been displayed in the Vatican, the circumstances of these
bone fragments' recovery and identification are unclear. The remains were taken from an
ancient burial ground beneath St. Peter's Basilica that was uncovered after 1939.
"They were close to some graffiti in ancient Greek that was interpreted as, 'Peter is here.'"
Yet no pope has gone so far as to definitively state that the
nine recovered bone fragments belong to Saint Peter. In 1968,
Pope Paul VI claimed that the bones were "identified in a way we consider
convincing," but offered precious little evidence beyond that. Skeptics remain, well, skeptical,
while believers will have to decide whether or not they want to take it as a matter of faith.
Pope Paul VI's remains were only "lightly embalmed" after his 1978 death. While it
seemed to work out decently enough for one of Paul's successors, John Paul II, the reality of
the 1978 funeral was quite a bit more gruesome. Part of the issue may have been with not only
the manner in which the deceased pontiff's body was treated, but the extreme weather that year.
The combined effects of the lack of embalming and the summer weather
were unfortunate for Paul VI and his mourners, to say the least.
A number of fans were installed around the pope's remains as they lay in state inside
St. Peter's Basilica in order to redirect the stench during the public viewing.
"My God, what is that smell?"
Meanwhile, though then-First Lady Rosalynn Carter spoke glowingly of the pontiff's spiritual life,
some couldn't help but notice that the pope's body had turned an alarming green-gray color.
The Vatican declined to say just what had or had not been done to Paul VI's
remains in the immediate aftermath of his death, but it was clear that
it hadn't been enough to stand up to the rigors of a summertime memorial in Rome.