From a Wall Street Journal story by Francis X. Rocca headlined “Pope Francis to Preside Over Predecessor’s Funeral, in a Vatican First”:

Pope Francis will preside over the funeral of his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday, bringing a historically unique situation—that of two popes residing practically side by side in the Vatican—to a similarly unusual close.

The event will be in a much lower key than the last papal funeral, that of St. John Paul II in 2005, when heads of state and government flocked to Rome along with millions of mourners, some of whom waited a dozen hours or more to file past the Polish pope’s body lying in state in the basilica.