Rome (AFP) - Wikileaks founder Julian Assange joined the crowds on Saturday in Rome for Pope Francis’s funeral, according to AFP journalists.

Assange mingled with thousands of mourners just outside St Peter’s Square, where world leaders including US President Donald Trump were gathered to say farewell to the head of the Catholic Church.

“Now Julian is free, we have all come to Rome to express our family’s gratitude for the pope’s support during Julian’s persecution,” Assange’s wife Stella said in a message cited on the Wikileaks X page.

Julian Assange was released in 2024 under a plea bargain after years of incarceration for publishing hundreds of thousands of confidential US government documents.

The plea bargain was agreed with the US administration under former president Joe Biden, who was also at the funeral.

Assange spent most of the previous 14 years either holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London to avoid arrest, or locked up at Belmarsh Prison in the British capital.

“Our children and I had the honor of meeting Pope Francis in June 2023 to discuss how to free Julian from Belmarsh prison,” Stella Assange said.

“Francis wrote to Julian in prison and even proposed to grant him asylum at the Vatican,” she said.

The Assange family were near the top of the Via della Conciliazione, the wide avenue that leads up to St Peter’s Square, which was packed for the funeral.

Assange’s case remains deeply contentious.

The trove published on the Wikileaks whistle-blowing website included searingly frank US State Department descriptions of foreign leaders, accounts of extrajudicial killings and intelligence gathering against allies.

Supporters hail Assange as a champion of free speech and say he was persecuted by authorities and unfairly imprisoned.

Detractors see him as a reckless blogger whose uncensored publication of ultra-sensitive documents put lives at risk and jeopardised US security.