Before mourners in their thousands gather in St. Peter’s Square to grieve, before leaders from around the world arrive to pay their respects, and long before cardinals cloister themselves to consider the future, the Vatican holds a small ceremony when a pope dies.

It did so again around 8 p.m. Monday when, just over 12 hours after he died, Pope Francis was transferred from the rooms of his simple residence, a guesthouse in Vatican City, down to a chapel on the ground floor.

There, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the cardinal chamberlain — known as the camerlengo — performed a ceremony verifying that the pope was dead, with the declaration of death read aloud. The body was placed in its coffin, with only a small number of Vatican officials and members of the pope’s family present.

These photographs, which were distributed by the Vatican, capture some of the legacy of simplicity that Francis tried to create. There is the spare setting, one unlike the ornate palace rooms where other popes lived and died. And there is the less elaborate single coffin, in line with the rules Francis instituted and his insistence on leading the Roman Catholic Church through an example of humility.

At the same time, the photos make clear that however much Francis tried to shake up the status quo, he did so cautiously. And so a look at the images reveals objects and figures that embody long-held traditions of the church.

The coffin

Last year, Francis simplified the procedures for a papal funeral, specifying that only one coffin, a wooden one lined in zinc, should be used. Past popes were interred in three nesting coffins: one of wood, a second of lead and a third of wood.

Francis asked to be buried at the Papal Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, where seven other popes are interred — and not within St. Peter’s Basilica or the Vatican Grottoes, where around 90 popes are buried. He requested a simple, undecorated tomb with only the inscription “Franciscus,” according to the Vatican. Francis visited Santa Maria Maggiore at the beginning and end of every apostolic trip he took during his 12-year papacy, and went there on his first day as pope in 2013.

In his will, Francis also specified that “the tomb must be in the earth; simple, without particular decoration.”

A miter and pallium

Francis’s body is dressed in red robes, like those of deceased popes before him. The white papal miter, the traditional headdress worn by bishops, is on his head, signifying his status as the bishop of Rome. Over his chest lies a pallium, a strip of white wool decorated with crosses that is worn like a collar. It denotes the pope’s status as an archbishop.