Who makes the Pope's coffin?

There’s a very secret workshop in the Vatican where a handful of skilled carpenters are tasked with making a very special item – the pope’s coffin. They usually don’t like to talk about their work, and are especially quiet when the Bishop of Rome dies. Even within the Vatican, very few people know who these woodworkers really are.

But the people who will make Pope Francis’s casket are the craftsmen of the Falegnameria Industriale, the Vatican’s in-house carpentry service. Most outsiders to the Vatican, including Romans, have never heard of the Falegnameria Industriale, and fewer still actually know where it is. Several Vatican sources I spoke to cut our conversation short, saying that the location is “top secret” and “off-limits”. Anyone wishing to visit the secret woodworking location requires a special pass that is issued by the Vatican authorities. I didn’t have one of those. And so I phoned them up.

Pope Francis, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, in the coffin in St. Peter’s Basilica. Here his body will be exposed to the faithful so that they, coming from all over the world, can give him a final farewell before the funeral. Photo: Salvatore Laporta/KONTROLAB/LightRocket via Getty Images

It turns out that the falegnami are extremely busy, ahead of the funeral of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, also known as Pope Francis. “We need to work,” said one of the carpenters when I spoke to him on the phone. He sounded in a hurry. In the background I could hear saws and the sound of other machinery. “I can’t talk and can’t reveal anything regarding the pope’s casket,” he said, before abruptly hanging up.

The in-house carpentry team does many other things. They take care of all the furniture inside the apostolic palace and other Vatican buildings – anything having to do with wood. They make specially commissioned doors, tables, windows, and repair all of these when needed.

According to sources involved in the pope’s funeral arrangements, there are only four carpenters with the necessary skill and seniority to make a papal coffin, and their craftsmanship is a centuries-old legacy handed down across generations of Vatican woodworkers.

Coffin with body of Pope Francis is transfered from Domus Sanctae Marthae to Saint Peter’s Basilica, at Saint Peter’s Square in Vatican on April 23, 2025. Photo: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Traditionally, the in-house carpenters would make three coffins for a dead pope, placed one inside the other like a Russian doll. The inner coffin was made of cypress wood, to highlight the pope’s mortality. The middle coffin was made of lead to preserve the corpse from the deterioration of the flesh and thus enhance the pope’s spirituality, while the third outer coffin was made of oak or elm to represent eternal power and strength that transcends death.

But in 2024, Pope Francis changed the papal burial protocol. Unlike his predecessors, he will be laid to rest in a single cypress casket, with an inner lining of zinc, with minimal ornamentation, bearing only the inscription “Franciscus”.

In another break with tradition, Francis’s coffin will not be buried within the Vatican Walls but in Rome, at the Basilica of Saint Mary Major (Santa Maria Maggiore). He will be buried in the bare earth, another break with tradition, on the other side of the Tiber River, near the buzzy Monti-Esquilino district. Even after death, Pope Francis wants to retain a certain distance from the Holy See.

Suggested read: The Papal Succession

In the days immediately following his death, excavating teams at the basilica spent hours digging into the ground to finalise an appropriate spot for the cypress coffin. A lot of Romans were surprised by this, having become accustomed to lavish papal caskets and burials. Francis has requested something much simpler.

The Vatican’s carpentry shop is itself a subunit of a department known as the Floreria Apostolica, which literally means “apostolic flower shop”, but it no longer has anything to do with floristry. Though in the past it did take care of flowery decorations within the apostolic palace (another specific office does that now) the 40 people who work at the Floreria currently handle the Vatican’s events, ranging from celebrations and conclaves, to papal audiences and the pope’s funeral arrangements.

The Floreria people carefully prepare the funeral site, placing a long red carpet that runs from the altar to the pope’s coffin, forming the shape of a cross.

High above the sagrato (St.Peter’s entrance), one side of the Charlemagne Wing running along the 11-meter tall basilica portico is the place where the cameramen and reporters usually sit.

Pallbearers carry the coffin of the late Pope Francis inside St Peter’s Basilica as it is transported in a procession from the chapel of Santa Marta to St Peter’s Basilica. Photo: DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP via Getty Images

The Floreria not only oversee the logistics of these events, but also protocol, which comes down to hard core politics. They are in charge of “placing” the 200 heads of state and government, religious leaders and royals who are attending the pope’s funeral service, which takes place around the open-air altar in front of St Peter’s Basilica. In that delicate task, the Floreriatakes guidance from the Prefecture of the Papal Household, the Vatican body in charge of overseeing the official audiences granted by the pope to world leaders.

The decisions on who sits in the front row, middle row, back row, whether to the right or to the left, are the result of delicate manoeuvres. Getting it wrong risks triggering diplomatic rows.

The delicate task of assigning a seat to each leader is based on the geo-political importance of the country they represent, a source from the Floreria told me. “So this time it will be starting from Trump, downward”.