Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service coming to live from London with me, Sean Lay.

In Rome on Saturday morning, they buried a Pope.

Temporal leader of just 49 hectares.

Vatican City is both by population and area the world's smallest state.

Pope Francis was spiritual leader to 1.41 billion. That's nearly 17% of the world's population. The colonnades which

surrounds St Peter's Square, typically filled with sightsears, offered a unique spectacle this morning,

150 or so heads of state or government attending the first papal funeral mass to be celebrated out of doors,

there among the ordinary faithful crowded into the square in its sunny tranquility.

Before mass began, some of the VAPs took a moment to stand before the Pope's coffin, now sealed, flanked by a pair of

Swiss guards, striped in red, dark blue and yellow, high-plumed helmet in place, hullbirds in hand.

At a little after 10 o'clock local time, bearers raised the coffin, not the triple layers of

cypress, lead and oak in which his predecessors were buried, but a plain

wooden casket. The BBC's World Affairs correspondent Joinwood watched the surface unfold.

Amidst the glistening spires of the Vatican, there was no avoiding the grandeur and history

of this moment, even for a Pope defined by his humility and determined to be

buried in a way that reflected the poverty of the people he served.

Pope Francis had chosen a simple wooden coffin, and it was in front of this that world leaders,

presidents, prime ministers and kings,

paused to pay their respects.

There was a ripple of applause as President Zelensky of Ukraine appeared on the big screen,

but this was not a day for politics.

Next the Cardinals filed past, rows of red miters and gowns. For the first

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