Rom (AFP) – Tourists visit Rome’s papal basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, the church Pope Francis chose as his final resting place. He is the first pontiff to be buried outside the Vatican walls in more than a century. Francis declared his desire to be entombed in the basilica — known in English as the Basilica of Saint Mary Major — in 2023. The last pope to be buried there was Clement IX in 1669.
