Pope Francis will be laid to rest Saturday after lying in state for three days in St. Peter’s Basilica.
The faithful are expected to flock there to pay their respects to history’s first Latin American pontiff.
Father Kevin Earleywine, of St. Patrick Catholic Church in Hampton, tells RadioOnTheGo News that the pope followed some basic statements he would make on a regular basis.
“I would say there were two phrases that I think sort of describe a lot of what he tried to do. One was he described the church as a field hospital for sinners. Very much that image of going to the wounded, the sick, the injured, and the idea of this missional aspect, but reaching those who are hurt, who are in need, who are sort of wounded, or on the margins, and so on. And secondly, he also used a phrase a lot, the spirituality of accompaniment. This idea of kind of meeting people where they’re at and walking with them. And think those two phrases sort of capture a lot of what he was trying to do in many other aspects.”
Pope Francis will be buried at St. Mary Major Basilica.
In an estimate from 2020, there were over 470-thousand Catholics in Iowa.
