They may be the most powerful people on earth, but for the seating arrangement at Pope Francis’ funeral on Saturday, all foreign leaders will play second fiddle to the Argentines and Italians and surrender to the whims of the French alphabet.
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About 130 foreign delegations had so far expressed their desire to attend the funeral, the Vatican said on Friday, and more were expected to do so throughout the day. Those include around 50 heads of state who have been confirmed as attending, among them US President Donald Trump and 10 reigning monarchs.
Apart from the VIPs, hundreds of thousands of people are expected to attend the funeral in St. Peter’s Square, which starts at 10am on Saturday. Italian police have laid on one of the most complex security operations in decades.
The official delegations will sit at a section to the right of the altar at the top of the steps leading toward St. Peter’s Basilica. Pride of place goes to Argentina, Francis’ native country, whose president, Javier Milei, will sit in the front row.
Milei, a maverick right-wing libertarian, had heaped insults on Francis while he was campaigning in 2023, calling him an “imbecile who defends social justice”. But the president shifted his tone after he took office that year.
Next comes Italy, the country that surrounds the Vatican and which agreed in 1929 to recognise its sovereignty as the world’s smallest state. It gets the second-best seats in the VIP section also because the pope is bishop of Rome and primate of the Catholic bishops of Italy.