NOLAN ON THE PEOPLE'S PONTIFF

HE is being remembered as the “parish priest of the world" and his final send-off reflected that.

- BY LARISSA NOLAN

Watching the two-hour funeral ceremony from Ireland, it felt like the unique legacy of Pope Francis was already taking place.

His funeral yesterday was one of the biggest events in modern history, bringing global leaders, the great and the good - along with the ordinary - together in a way nothing else could.

It attracted 250,000 mourners to St Peter's Square, and approxi-mately 150,000 more lined the streets of Rome in a procession in his honour, clapping and calling out: “Il Papa.”

It drew in hundreds of thousands of viewers and united more than a billion ordinary Catholics interna-tionally.

And yet the enduring image of this humble Pope’s last goodbye is of his simple wooden coffin, the gospel laid on top of it.

It is marked only with his name: Franciscus.

Curiously, it seemed to be what the world needs now. In a time we are more divided than ever, his passing brought us together.

There's also a sense his death has breathed life into a church on its knees and has done more to reha-bilitate it than anything else since it was rightly tainted for so long by the darkest of scandals.

On the passing of “The People’s Pope” everyone was happy to be Catholic again, after years when the religion was the only allowed to be bashed.

I was one of those who felt compelled to get up on a Saturday at 8am to watch the spectacle live from the beautiful Vatican City.

I'm not a devout person, but I enjoy the rites and rituals of the Catholic church, the drama of the Latin mass, the Gregorian chants.

Also - for good or bad - the religion of our nation is written into our cultural DNA, is part of our childhood, our tradition.