Yunus flies to Vatican to attend Pope Francis’s funeral

An hour after arriving in Rome, he is supposed to pay his respects to the departed pontiff

Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus has flown to the Vatican from Qatar to attend the funeral of Pope Francis.

A flight carrying the chief advisor took off from the Hamad International Airport in Doha at 9:25am local time on Friday (12:25pm Bangladesh time) as Qatar Protocol Department chief Ibrahim Yousif Abdullah Fakhro saw him off.

Yunus’s Deputy Press Secretary Abul Kalam Azad Majumder told state-run Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS) that the chief advisor is expected to arrive in Rome at 2:15pm Italian time.

He will be received by the ambassador of Bangladesh to Italy and the ambassador of Bangladesh to the Vatican, BSS reported.

An hour after arriving in Italy, Yunus will go to St Peter's Square and pay his respect to the pope, who died at 88 on Monday in his rooms at the Vatican's Santa Marta guesthouse after suffering a stroke.

The body of Pope Francis, who visited Bangladesh in 2017, was brought to St Peter's Basilica in a solemn procession on Wednesday.

The Vicar General of the Vatican Cardinal Mauro Gambetti will formally greet Yunus and the Bangladesh delegation at St Peter's.

Yunus will attend the funeral at around 9:30am local time on Saturday.

He will join world leaders, including US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron, at the funeral in the open plaza of the square.

Yunus is expected to depart from Leonardo da Vinci Rome Fiumicino Airport at around 8am on Sunday, (12pm Bangladesh time) and touch down in Dhaka early on Monday.

He left Dhaka on Apr 21 for a four-day visit to Qatar to attend the Earthna Summit 2025.