BURIAL rituals for the Pope will be elaborate and follow centuries-old tradition, the Vatican said yesterday.

The Pope will be buried in the earth beneath St Peter’s Basilica within three coffins.

Inside the first, made of plain cypress, the Pope will lie dressed in liturgical vestments and with his bishop’s mitre on his chest. His face will be covered in a white silk veil.

Beside him will be placed a small bag of silver coins and commemorative medals from his pontificate as well as a brief summary of his life on a scroll sealed in a lead tube.

The body will be placed in the first coffin tomorrow night and moved to the stone steps of the Basilica during the three-hour funeral Mass.

From there it will be taken into the building where, following church tradition, it will be placed in a zinc coffin that will be hermetically sealed. That coffin will in turn be placed in an oak coffin and interred under a marble slab.

The Pope will be buried under the spot once occupied by the tomb of Pope John XXIII in the Basilica crypt.

John XXIII, who died in 1963, was placed in an above-ground marble tomb in the crypt, known as the Vatican Grottoes. The body was moved to a chapel on the altar floor of the Basilica after he was beatified in 2001. The alcove where his tomb had stood remained empty.

John Paul will be buried under the floor of that alcove in the earth rather than in a sarcophagus.

He will rest alongside his immediate predecessor, John Paul I, who died after a 33-day papacy in 1978.

The Pope has left a final testament but the cardinals have yet to open it.

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