Pope Francis praised Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s “acute and gentle thought” as he presided over a packed Wednesday general audience in the Vatican, while thousands of people paid tribute to the former pope on the final day of public viewing in St. Peter’s Basilica. Francis was greeted by an enthusiastic crowd in the Paul VI auditorium and shouts of “Viva il papa!” or “Long live the pope” as he arrived for his weekly catechism appointment with the faithful. This week’s audience was conducted as tens of thousands of people continued to flock to St. Peter’s Basilica to pay their respects before Benedict’s body, lying in state. The first two days of viewing drew a total of 135,000 people. Wednesday’s viewing began before dawn and was set to end in early evening. Francis is due to preside over the late German pope’s funeral on Thursday, an event that is drawing heads of state and royalty despite Benedict’s requests for simplicity and Vatican efforts to keep the first Vatican funeral for an emeritus pope in modern times low-key. Francis drew applause when he opened his remarks by noting all those who were outside paying tribute to Benedict, whom he called a “great master of catechesis.” “His acute and gentle thought was not self-referential, but ecclesial, because he always wanted to accompany us in the encounter with Jesus,” Francis said. Later Wednesday, Vatican officials were to place Benedict’s body in a cypress coffin — the first of three coffins —along with a brief, written summary of his historic papacy, the coins minted during his pontificate and his pallium stoles. Read more: Pope on Christmas: Jesus was poor, so don’t be power-hungry After the funeral, the retired pontiff’s remains will be carried back into the basilica, where the coffin will placed inside a zinc one, and then finally into another made from oak. In keeping with Benedict’s wishes, his remains will be placed in the crypt once occupied by the tomb of St. John Paul II in the grottos underneath the basilica. Benedict, who was elected pope in 2005 following John Paul’s death, became the first pope in six centuries years to resign when he announced in 2013 he no longer had the strength to lead the Catholic Church. After Francis was elected pope, Benedict spent his nearly decade-long retirement in a converted monastery in the Vatican Gardens. “We can’t forget the example that he gave in his resignation, that he more or less said, ‘Look, I’m not in this for the prestige, the power of the office, I’m in it for service, as Jesus taught,’” recalled Cardinal Timothy Dolan, whom Benedict named archbishop of New York in 2009 and cardinal in 2012. Dolan came to Rome for the funeral. Thursday’s rite takes into account the unusual situation in which a reigning pope will preside over a funeral for a retired one, making important changes to a funeral ritual for popes that is highly codified. Two key prayers, from the diocese of Rome and the Eastern rite churches, that were recited during John Paul’s funeral, for example, will be omitted because Benedict wasn’t pope when he died and because both branches of the Catholic Church still have a reigning pope as their leader: Francis. Read more: Did the Pope actually say ‘even nuns watch porn’? While the funeral will be novel, it does has some precedent: In 1802, Pope Pius VII celebrated the funeral in St. Peter’s of his predecessor, Pius VI, who had died in exile in France in 1799 as a prisoner of Napoleon, the Vatican noted Wednesday.

Families that usually reunite on Christmas over a hearty, lingering meal celebrated apart Friday, services shifted online, and gift exchanges were low-key in one of the most unusual and subdued holiday seasons in decades.

The Vatican is sending its top two sex crimes investigators to Mexico on a fact-finding and assistance mission as the Catholic hierarchy in the world's second-largest Catholic country begins to reckon with decades of clergy sex abuse and cover-up.

A Chinese Catholic priest whose demotion was key to a now-stalled effort at reconciliation between China and the Vatican is being pressured to join the official Communist Party-controlled church organization, a fellow priest and Catholic news source said.