World lead­ers and rank-and-file Catholic faith­ful bade farewell to Pope Fran­cis in a fu­ner­al Sat­ur­day that high­light­ed his con­cern for peo­ple on the pe­riph­eries and re­flect­ed his wish to be re­mem­bered as a sim­ple pas­tor. Though pres­i­dents and princes at­tend­ed the Mass in St. Pe­ter’s Square, pris­on­ers and mi­grants wel­comed Fran­cis’ cof­fin at his fi­nal rest­ing place in a basil­i­ca across town.

Ac­cord­ing to Vat­i­can es­ti­mates, some 250,000 peo­ple flocked to the fu­ner­al Mass at the Vat­i­can and 150,000 more lined the mo­tor­cade route through down­town Rome to wit­ness the first fu­ner­al pro­ces­sion for a pope in a cen­tu­ry. They clapped and cheered “Pa­pa Francesco” as his sim­ple wood­en cof­fin trav­eled aboard a mod­i­fied pope­mo­bile to St. Mary Ma­jor Basil­i­ca, some 6 kilo­me­ters (3.5-miles) away.

As bells tolled, the pall­bear­ers brought the cof­fin past sev­er­al dozen mi­grants, pris­on­ers and home­less peo­ple hold­ing white ros­es out­side the basil­i­ca. Once in­side, the pall­bear­ers stopped in front of the icon of the Vir­gin Mary that Fran­cis loved. Four chil­dren de­posit­ed the ros­es at the foot of the al­tar be­fore car­di­nals per­formed the bur­ial rite at his tomb in a near­by niche.