Miserere mei, Deus, secundum miseri-cordiam tuam.
These words [Have pity on me, God, according to thy mercy.'), which I pronounced at the moment in which with trepidation I accepted election as Supreme Pontiff, I now repeat at a time in which knowledge of the deficiencies, of the failures, of the sins committed during so long a pontificate and in so grave an epoch has made more clear to my mind my insufficiency and unworthiness . . . I pray those whose affair it is not to bother to erect any monuments to my memory: sufficient it is that my poor mortal remains should be laid simply in a sacred place . . .
Thus wrote Pope Pius XII in his last will and testament, found after his death last week in a safe in his study. But the remains of Eugenio Pacelli, Pius XII, Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, were not "laid simply" away. Before the great altar in St. Peter's, where only the Pope may say Mass, the body of Pius XII lay in state for three days. Then, after final absolution, it was placed in a triple coffin (oak, lead and cypress) and interred in the most sacred spot in Christendom—below the Bernini altar near St. Peter's supposed grave, whose discovery the Pope himself announced in 1950. Buried with the Pope was a red bag containing a sample of every Vatican coin minted during his reign, a parchment copy of the eulogy read at the final funeral Mass and the pieces of his broken Fisherman's Ring.
Despite the grandeur of the funeral, the mourners 'who thronged the Vatican this week—the foreign statesmen as well as the crowds of Romans who had cheered him for years as he rode through his city —knew the simplicity and the intelligent humanity that had been present beneath the papal pomp. And they would scarcely agree with his humble self-assessment of "failures" and "insufficiency." Men of all faiths agreed that Pius XII had been a great Pope.
State of the Church. Other Popes have risen to the challenge of the 20th century, notably Leo XIII, who gave the church and the world his great encyclical on labor. But in the 19 years of Eugenio Pacelli's reign, the nature of the papacy has changed dramatically, partly because few men who have worn the triple crown have been so keenly and so tirelessly aware of the agonies of their age.