Above: The Capuchin Church in Vienna in 2016. Rudolf's body is located in a sarcophagus in the imperial crypt below the church, as are the bodies of Franz Josef and Empress Elisabeth.

Source: Wikipedia: Kapuzinerkirche (Wien)

15. Rudolf's Burial (continued)

The preparations for Rudolf's funeral were already underway on February 1 when Franz Josef sent his foreign minister, Count Gusztáv Kálnoky, to inform Papal Nuncio Luigi Galimberti about the medical verdict as to Rudolf's "momentary insanity" and Chaplain Mayer's granting of a church burial. Galimberti, the Vatican's ambassador to Austria-Hungary, immediately telegraphed the information to Rome.

Galimberti seemed almost grateful that Chaplain Mayer had taken care of a hot potato that might have bounced all the way up to Pope Leo XIII.

Had consent for a church burial not been given, Galimberti told the German ambassador, Prince Heinrich Reuss, and "had it been necessary to bury the suicide [Rudolf] without the blessings of the Church, the population of Vienna would undoubtedly have let itself be swept away to the worst possible excesses. His Majesty the Emperor was therefore supremely worried..." (Judtmann 228).

Under the circumstances Galimberti was certainly not going to raise objections to the church burial. "My official conscience is clear... I only have to believe what the Minister of Foreign Affairs tells me," he told Reuss.

On February 5, 1889, Rudolf's body was taken from the Hofburg to Vienna's Capuchin Church in a hearse drawn by six grey Lipizzaner horses. The small church could accommodate only a limited number of mourners by invitation only, but a grandstand was erected on a vacant lot so that members of the public could watch the funeral cortege go by.