live pictures of st. peter s square in vatican city as we continue with our special coverage of the funeral of pope benedict xvi. very warm welcome to our viewers joining us in the united states and all around the world. i m bianca nobilo. i m max foster live from london. funeral for pope emeritus has just come to an end a short while ago at st. peter s square at the vatican. pope benedict asked for a simple ceremony. pope francis presided over the funeral delivering the homily a short while ago. before that, nearly 200,000 people paid their respects to the late pope during the last three days of public viewing. benedict will be buried in the vatican crypt inside the
pr now joined by robert moynahan, editor of inside the vatican magazine. it is so great to have you. thank you for coming on. this really is we were watching live pictures from the vatican. we don t really have control. is coming from a pool camera an we are getting different shots. as raymond was mentioning the cardinals and jonathan was mentioning that gathering up th cardinals, talk about what you believe will be different durin this memorial versus that of a reigning pope. it s entirely different in the sense that the reigning pop is the head of the church. and pope benedict gave up that role ten years ago on the 28th of february, 2013.
thinking that i have been doing this job for almost 25 years now. i got to rome to cover the vatican in the mid 9 os. there has never been a moment in which cardinal wasn t a focus of my daily work. for the first part of the time i was here he was the doctoral czar under john paul ii, then he was pope, then for the last ten years he has been a key point of reference and really against his own will at times, a symbol of conservative dissent from his successor, pope francis. you know, in terms of stories, i mean, they are legion. i ll tell you the one that s been going through my mind this morning, blessed with more pomp and circumstance f we were february 28th, 2013.
francis is that pope francis says he d like to put all theologians on an island because the theologian is the one he d like to hash out all of the doctrines of the church and teachings and francis is the man of action and of course you need both of those things. so this funeral today really brought home to me, and i think to people that cover the vatican, those two aspects, that you say good-bye to this conservative, yes, pope, but to this theologian on the part of a pope who is a man of practice, a man of action and very much loved for that. so certainly the whole universal catholic church is sort of summed up in those two figures. bianca, max? delia, fred, thank you both very much indeed. these moments, few organizations do them better than the vatican. it was a poignant, amazing service. something they have been trying to grapple with.
vatican, inside the power center of the church there s pretty much no one that had more influence than pope benedict xvi and before that when he was car cardinal ratzinger. inside the walls behind me people are saying this is the end of a massive era in the catholic church, abby. that s right. what an historic moment for the world to see a pope lying in state, not, you know, the end of not the beginning of a new papacy because there is another pope right now. fred pleitgen, thank you very much. reporter: yeah. and in brazil they are coming by the thousands to say good-bye to a hero and a sports legend, pele. he died last week at the age of 82, and as a steady stream of mourners continues to file past his casket on the grounds of the santos football club, the wake for the former soccer icon will