Burying Pope Francis: The Vatican Tombs, Topology and Peripheral Ataraxia

Abstract

This paper (number 7) in the research project “Burying the Dead” follows the introductory comments and typology of Aguilar’s previous papers, but moves the material context of burial to Rome and to the latest papal burial, that of Pope Francis in 2025. Pope Francis, Argentine by birth and a Jesuit, started his pontificate on 13 March 2013 and died on 21 April 2025, Easter Monday, at 7.35 am at the Vatican. He was 88 years old and had served as Pope for twelve years. His papal imprint was of a humble and people’s Pope who guided the Catholic Church and indeed the world during the COVID pandemic. He lived in the Casa Santae Marthae in Vatican City, where pilgrims stayed, and he was seen taking meals at the large dining room with pilgrims and Vatican employees. This paper explores the planning of a suitable tomb by Pope Francis and team, and the implications not only for the Vatican centrality of St. Peter’s Basilica but for a topology of popes’ burials. The paper argues that there was a process of papal ataraxia due to the burial diversification and change that Pope Francis pushed within the history of papal burials in the Catholic Church. The paper concludes that tombs signify a continuity of a person’s life, and in the case of the Pope, an institution’s life, centred in this case on the centrality of the apostle Peter and the Catholic Petrine office.