26-04-2025
Pope Francis' coffin sealed as leaders arrive for funeral
Amid the 90,000 flocking to pay their respects to Pope Francis at St Peter's Basilica, an octogenarian nun, carrying a green backpack, quietly broke strict Vatican protocol to approach the coffin of the late Pontiff. French-Argentine nun Sister Geneviève Jeanningros was granted a rare exception to protocol at St. Peter's Basilica. Credit: Vatican Media/X / supplied
As hordes continued to follow the Holy See's instruction to pray and cry in silence as the late Pontiff lay in state, 81-year-old Sister Genevieve Jeanningros, who comes from the order of the Little Sisters of Jesus, moved beyond the red rope to farewell Francis, with whom she shared a friendship for more than four decades.
The pair's relationship stretched back to Francis' home country of Argentina, where Genevieve's aunt, a French nun was kidnapped and murdered in 1977 during the military dictatorship of Alfredo Astiz.
The tragedy led French-Argentine Sister Jeanningros to get involved with defending human rights while maintaining links with Argentina, where she met Francis when he was still Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Buenos Aires' archbishop. The pair bonded over their ties to victims of the repression, according to
Pope Francis even gave her the nickname 'L'enfant terrible' for her rebellious spirit, with Sister Jeanningros known to bring homeless people and transgender women to the Vatican's general audiences each week, where the Pontiff received them with open arms.
It was little wonder neither the Swiss Guards nor the gendarmes moved to stop Sister Jeanningros from approaching Francis' simple wooden coffin, where she prayed and cried for 20 minutes in a profound show of faith that went viral.
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