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  • 2 days ago
Pope Francis embarks on his final journey to his final resting place in Santa Maria Maggiore in the Popemobile.Mourners lined the streets of Rome to pay their respects as the late pontiff made his final journey.WATCH ABOVE.
Transcript
00:00British consciousness?
00:02Well, I think it's been pretty well covered and very generously,
00:05and it's difficult to sort of, you know, nothing's jumped out of the page,
00:10as it were, sort of, you know, God hasn't been said.
00:12But I think, you know, one of the extraordinary things,
00:15and I obviously experienced it at a personal level,
00:18is how Francis, despite being a huge global spiritual figure
00:24who spoke truth to power, who met all sorts of heads of state,
00:30there's so many, so many personal anecdotes of individuals
00:36who were touched by him on an individual basis.
00:40And I speak to you as someone who had that experience
00:42because on my 40th anniversary, I went with my wife
00:46and I had a kind of private audience with him.
00:49And I'll never forget, he took our hands and just looked at us
00:56with that extraordinary face of his, which, full of light,
01:00full of engagement, full of compassion.
01:03And he just asked us straight away, which of you has been most patient?
01:09Well, I mean, what kind of better phrase to address to anyone
01:14who's been married with all its ups and downs
01:17to ask which of you has been more patient?
01:20Which left both my wife and I absolutely gobsmacked.
01:23And, of course, we were both sort of trying to point at each other
01:26in a moment of generosity, which, obviously, he wanted to elicit from us.
01:32But you have a lot of those stories, you know.
01:35He was particularly good with kids.
01:38I was once with him holding a baby because I was in the front row
01:42and there was a parent with a baby 20 rows behind
01:46who'd been throwing the baby almost like a kind of basket
01:50over the heads of everyone.
01:51Finally, it landed in my arms just at the moment
01:55when Pope Francis was going past.
01:57And I held the baby up and he ordered the Popemobile to stop
02:01and he leaned over and he just touched the baby on the head
02:06and I could see the faces of his parents sort of registering this moment
02:12as something that they would never forget.
02:14Yeah, it's incredible.
02:15And, Jimmy, we're now seeing this adapted Popemobile
02:19moving through the streets of Rome.
02:22And, Caroline, as you're just hearing from Jimmy
02:25about how this Pope had a particularly special connection with people,
02:30it's no surprise to see the police having to line these streets
02:34to hold back these deep crowds.
02:37No, it's not.
02:38And when Jimmy said this was very reminiscent
02:42of the late Princess of Wales, Diana,
02:45that was the exact same thought came into my head
02:49watching this footage.
02:52And it's actually very new because this is the first Pope
02:57to be buried outside of the Vatican in 120 years.
03:03And it seems strangely moving and fitting,
03:08even though it's outside of Vatican protocols,
03:11because normally what happens is we have the papal funeral
03:14and then the burial is always a very quiet and private affair.
03:19I mean, the Vatican does normally release pictures afterwards
03:21and I should imagine that they,
03:23although the internment in St Mary Major will itself be private,
03:27I imagine that they...

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