One week ago today, Pope Francis's appearance in St Peter's Square led many to believe his health might be stabilising or even improving.
But within hours the world would hear that his efforts in greeting pilgrims from across the world on Easter Sunday in a Jubilee Year would be among his last.
Over the course of the last week, Rome has said goodbye to its pope and its bishop with a lying-in-state and a funeral that, while pared back from previous papal funerals, was nonetheless a major international event.
The opportunity it gave world leaders like US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to hold one-on-one talks during difficult times might yet prove to be a legacy of Francis’s papacy he could never have anticipated.
The high stakes diplomacy which emerged from the funeral both a fitting tribute and an unintended consequence of this week's events.
The Homily from the Dean of the College of Cardinals Giovanni Battista Re called on the world to continue Pope Francis’s legacy of caring for the marginalised.
The pope had always sought to "build bridges, not walls" he said, a message all the more relevant given the many conflicts and crises the world now faces.
For another day, tens of thousands of people flocked to the streets around the Vatican to be part of the funeral.
All week they filed through St Peter's Basilica to stand in front of the pope's coffin and pay their respects.
While Vatican officials had anticipated significant numbers, the decision to extend the hours in which the public could enter St Peter's Basilica shows that even they were taken by surprise at the number of people who felt the need to say their goodbyes.
This is an event which runs through both Vatican City and the city of Rome, a centuries old rite that impacts many across the Italian capital.
It has been particularly true this week, where the pope’s choice to be buried in central Rome rather than in the Vatican saw large queues form outside the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore even before Pope Francis was buried there.
The first pope to be interred outside of St Peter's in over a hundred years, it is now expected that the site of Francis’s tomb is likely to become another place of pilgrimage in Rome.
That impact will be immediate.
Any diplomatic impact created from the papal funeral may take longer to become clear.
Read more:
The significance of Francis's final resting place
Pope's funeral hears call to 'build bridges, not walls'
In pictures: Mourners bid farewell to the 'people's Pope'
