Refugees, royals and world leaders gather in Vatican for pope's funeral

An extraordinary array of invitees, spanning heads of state and royals from around the world, as well as refugees, prisoners, transgender people and those who are homeless will descend on St Peter's Square today for the funeral of Pope Francis, the groundbreaking liberal pontiff who led the Catholic church for 12 years.

- Angela Giuffrida

Francis died at the age of 88 on Monday at his home in Casa Santa Marta after a stroke and subsequent heart failure. He had been recovering from double pneumonia which had kept him in hospital for five weeks.

Tens of thousands of mourners filed into St Peter's Basilica to pay their respects to the late pontiff during the three days in which he lay in state. His coffin was sealed during a private ceremony last night.

The funeral mass begins at 10am local time (0800 GMT) and will be led by the Italian cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the dean of the college of cardinals.

With at least 130 foreign delegations attending, alongside an estimated 250,000 pilgrims, the funeral has required a huge and complex security operation in the Vatican and Rome involving thousands of Italian police and military, as well as the Vatican's Swiss Guards, the smallest army in the world. Soldiers in St Peter's Square have been equipped with guns that shoot down drones, while rooftop snipers and fighter jets are on standby.

A delegation from Francis's home country of Argentina, led by the president, Javier Milei, will be seated in the front row during the mass, with Italian leaders, including the president, Sergio Mattarella, and the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, in the second row, and other heads of state and royals in the third.