[WATCH] Benedict XVI laid to rest

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was laid rest this morning, after over 60,000 people attended his funeral and paid their final respects to the former pontiff.

This was the first time that a sitting pope, his successor Pope Francis, will preside over the funeral of his predecessor.

Benedict passed away last Saturday at the age of 95 in his residence at the Vatican’s Mater Ecclesiae Monastery.

The former pope’s body has been lying in state since Monday. The viewing ended at 7pm on Wednesday, after which his body was placed in a coffin made of cypress wood.

He will be buried with several other papal items, including vestments symbolising his role as a pope and bishop, coins and medals minted during his pontificate, and a lead tube with a Latin deed listing the key points in his pontificate.

Who was Benedict?

Benedict XVI was one of the oldest new popes in history when he was elected in 2005 at the age of 78.

A piano-playing professor, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was looking forward to retirement when Pope John Paul II died in 2005 – but fate had it otherwise as cardinals elected him to lead the Catholic Church.

Apart from taking the helm in a period of rapid global change, he also had to lead the Catholic Church through one of the fiercest storms it had faced in decades.

Allegations, lawsuits and official reports into clerical abuse were starting to flow in, reaching a peak in 2009 and 2010.

The most damaging claims for the Church were that local dioceses - or even the Vatican itself - were complicit in the cover-up of many of the cases, prevaricating over the punishment of paedophile priests and sometimes moving them to new postings where they continued to abuse.

As these cases went public, the Pope insisted that the Church should accept its own responsibility, pointing directly to “sin within the Church”.

He met with and issued an unprecedented apology to victims. He insisted that bishops report such abuse and introduced fast-track rules for defrocking abusive priests.

But he remained a polarising figure as Pope. Conservatives lauded him for his staunch insistence on fidelity to church doctrine, while critics dubbed him “God’s Rottweiler” for the same reason.

He was highly criticised for his handling of child abuse cases. A probe into the allegations in 2022 found that he failed to take action against priests in four child sex abuse cases while Archbishop of Munich.

There had also been an embarrassing leak of documents from the Pope’s desk, revealing corruption and mismanagement inside the Vatican. This led to the conviction of his butler, and left a damaging impression of a power struggle at the Holy See.

After spending eight years as pope, Benedict went on to resign as head of the Catholic Church in February 2013. He became the first Pope to resign since Gregory XII in 1415.