Fiorello Maffei, a 58-year-old who lives in London, returned to Italy for the now postponed canonisation of Carlo, a Londoner himself born to Italian parents who died of leukaemia at the age of 15. Maffei said he had found Francis’s funeral “very touching” and full of simple words and messages of love that still “carried great weight”.

Francis, who took his name after Saint Francis of Assisi, was known for his outreach to the poor and those in poverty and that will be reflected in his minimalist burial at Saint Mary Major. He is the first pope to be buried outside the Vatican in over a century and the first to be buried at Santa Maria Maggiore in more than 300 years.

Hundreds of people filed past the tomb of Pope Francis from early on Sunday morning in the Roman basilica where he chose to be buried in a break from tradition. No pope had been laid to rest outside the Vatican in more than a century,