Vatican City (AP) – Pope Francis, the first Latin American pope in history, captivated the world with his humble style and concerns about poor but marginalized conservatives, accompanied by criticism of poor but capitalism and climate change. He was 88 years old.
The Vatican said Francis died of a stroke that caused him to sleep coma and led to heart failure.
A bell rang across the globe at the Catholic Church, across from Argentina, across from the Philippines and Rome, where news spread throughout the world.
“At 7:35 this morning, Bishop Francis of Rome returned to his father’s house. His life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and his church,” said Cardinal Kevin Farrell from the chapel of Domus Santa Marta, where Francis lived.
Francis, who suffered from chronic lung disease and removed part of one of his lungs as a young man, was admitted to Gemeri Hospital on February 14, 2025 due to a respiratory crisis that had developed double pneumonia. He spent 38 days there, the Pope’s longest hospitalization in 12 years.
He made his final public appearance on Easter Sunday, the day before his death. They congratulated the thousands of people on St. Peters Square, eliciting wild cheers and applause. Beforehand, he met US Vice President JD Vance.
Francis gave a blessing from the same loggia and was introduced as the 266th Pope on March 13, 2013.
From his first greeting of the night – the very ordinary “Buonasela” (“A pleasant night”) – to the embrace of refugees and oppressed losers, Francis gave a very different tone of the Pope, highlighting the humility towards the hub arrogance of the Catholic Church, plagued by scandal and indifferent ascuses.
Argentine-born Jorge Mario Bergolio breathed fresh air into the facility from 2,000 years ago, and his influence faded when he suffered the problems of Pope Benedict XVI, which led to the election of Francis.
However, Francis soon brought his own troubles, and the conservatives grew increasingly angry at his progressive bends on LGBTQ+ Catholics, crackdowns on traditionalists. His biggest test took place in 2018 when he failed the infamous case of clergy sexual abuse in Chile, with a newly erupted scandal that festered under his predecessor.
And Francis, the Pope who loves the surrounding crowds and exterminates the Earth, has navigated the unprecedented reality that leads universal religion through the coronavirus pandemic from locked-down Vatican cities.
“We found ourselves on the same boat. We noticed that we were all vulnerable and confused,” Francis told the empty St. Peter’s Square in March 2020. In pursuit of a rethinking of the global economic framework, he said the pandemic has “showed the need for us all to row together.
World leaders praised Francis’ commitment to marginalized people on Monday. Emmanuel Macron, France’s mostly Catholic country, writes about X:
The flag flew with Italian half staff and the crowd gathered at St. Peters Square. When the Great Bells of St. Peter’s Cathedral began to pay, tourists stopped in their trucks and recorded the moment on their cell phones.
Johann Xavier, who traveled from Australia, wanted to see the Pope during his visit. “But when we came here we heard about it. It almost destroyed us all,” he said.
Francis’ death sparked a few weeks of process allowing followers to pay their final respect. First for Vatican officials at the Chapel of Santa Marta, then for the general public of St. Peter, then a conclave to elect a funeral and a new Pope.
As the sun set on Monday evening, the Vatican embraced the Rosary prayer at St. Peter’s Square to commemorate the first public offering.
In his final will, Francis confirmed that he would be buried in the Basilica of Major St. Mary in a simple grave where only “Franciscus” was written on it. Outside the Vatican, the cathedral features the icon of Francis’ favorite Virgin Mary, whose special devotion was made.
Vatican reform
Francis was elected on a power of attorney that reformed Vatican bureaucracy and finances, but went further in shaking the church without changing its core doctrine. “Who do I judge?” he replied when asked about being considered a gay priest.
The comments sent a welcome message to those who felt shunned by the LGBTQ+ community and the church, which emphasized the sexual validity of unconditional love. “Being gay is not a crime,” he told The Associated Press in 2023, urging the end of civil law that criminalizes it.
Emphasizing mercy, Francis changed the church’s position on the death penalty, calling it unacceptable in all circumstances. He also declared that possession of nuclear weapons was “immoral” as well as their use.
In the other first, he approved an agreement with China on the nomination of bishops that has been plaguing the Vatican for decades, meeting the Russian patriarch and celebrating his new ties with the Islamic world by visiting the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq.
He reaffirmed the priesthood of all men and singles, and supported the church’s opposition to abortion, equating it with “hiring a hitman to solve the problem.”
The role of women
However, he allowed women to serve as diocese lecturers and acolites in addition to important decision-making roles. He has him vote with the bishop at regular Vatican meetings following years of complaints that women do much of their church work but are excluded from power.
Sister Natalie Bekart, whom Francis nominated for one of the highest Vatican jobs, said his legacy is a vision of the church where men and women exist in a relationship of reciprocity and respect.
“It was about shifting patterns of domination from humans to creation, from men to women,” said Becquart, the first woman to hold the first position to vote at a Vatican meeting.
Still, the criticism notes came on Monday from the Women’s Ordination Conference.
“His recurring “closed door” policy on the ordination of women is not his otherwise idyllic nature and painless, and for many, the betrayal of the Synodal, which he defended.
Church as Evacuees
Francis did not allow women to ordained, but voting reform was part of a revolutionary change that emphasized what the church should be. Immigrants, poor people, prisoners and exiles were invited to his table far more than the president or powerful CEO.
“For Pope Francis, the goal was to always stretch out the arms of the church to embrace everyone.
Francis demanded that his bishops apply mercy and charity to their flocks, pushed the world to protect God’s creation from climate disasters, and challenged countries that welcomed fleeing wars, poverty and oppression.
After a 2016 visit to Mexico, Francis said then-US presidential candidate Donald Trump was “not Christians” who would set up the wall to keep immigrants out.
Progressive was excited by the fundamental focus of Francis’ mercy and inclusion, but plagued conservatives who feared he watered down Catholic teachings and threatened the highly Christian identity in the West. Some called him heresy.
Several cardiacs openly challenged him. Francis usually answered with his typical answer to conflict, silence.
He allowed married Catholics to facilitate abolition, priests exempt women who had aborted, and priests ordered that they could bless same-sex couples. He began discussing issues such as homosexuality and divorce, giving pastors room to identify the methods that come with their flock, rather than handing them over to apply strict rules.
St. Francis of Assisi as a Model
Francis lives in a hotel in the Vatican instead of the Apostles Palace, wearing old orthotic shoes and riding in a compact car, rather than the Pope’s red loafers. It wasn’t a gimmick.
“Today, we clearly believe that what the church needs most is its ability to heal wounds and warm the hearts of faithful people,” he told the Jesuit magazine in 2013.
If he became the first Latin American and the first Jesuit pope, Francis was the first to name him after St. Francis of Assisi, a 13th century monk known for his personal simplicity and care for social outcasts.
Francis formally apologized to Indigenous people for post-colonial church crimes. And he went to the fringe of society to serve with mercy: love the transformed head of a man in St. Peter’s Square, kiss the tattoo of a Holocaust survivor, or invite an Argentine garbage scavenger to the stage in Rio de Janeiro.
“We’ve always been marginalized, but Pope Francis has always helped us,” said Koki Vargas, a transgender woman whose Roman community has developed a unique relationship with Francis.
His first trip as Pope was on the island of Lampedusa in Italy, and at the time the epicenter of the European immigration crisis. He consistently chose to visit poor countries where Christians are not the centre of global Catholicism, but often persecuted minority.
A friend and fellow Bishop of Argentine, Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sondo, said his concerns were based on bliss.
“Why is beatitud the Pope’s program? Because they were the basis of Jesus Christ’s own program,” Sanchez said.
Sexual abuse scandal failure
However, it was more than a year before Francis met the priestly sexual abuse survivors, and the group of victims first questioned whether they really understood the scope of the issue.
Francis created a sexual abuse committee to advise the church on best practices, but after a few years it lost its influence and the court’s recommendations to the incumbent judge who concealed the predator priest went anywhere.
And then, in 2018, he was standing by the controversial bishops associated with their abusers, trusting the victims of Chilean abuse and recognising their abusers, his Pope’s greatest crisis came. Recognizing his mistake, Francis invited the victims to the Vatican for personal Mea culpa, summoned Chilean church leaders, and resigned in large numbers.
As the crisis concluded, a new erupted on former Prime Minister Theodore McCarrick, Washington’s retired archbishop and three pontificate counselors.
Francis actually moved McCarrick to sideline McCarrick amid accusations of abusing a teenage altar boy in the 1970s. But nonetheless, Francis was accused of rehabilitating McCarrick early in his Holy See by the former US ambassador of the Vatican.
Francis eventually dismantled McCarrick after Vatican investigation determined he had sexually abused an adult just like minors. He changed the laws of the church to remove the sacred secrets surrounding abuse cases, investigate bishops who abused or covered pedophile priests, and enacted procedures to end immunity to the hierarchy.
“He really wanted to do something, and he told me that,” said Juan Carlos Cruz, who discredited Chilean abuse survivor Francis.
However, the group advocating more actions against sexual abuse expressed disappointment at Francis’ legacy.
“Pope Francis was a sign of hope for many of the world’s most hopeless and marginalized people. But what we needed most from this Pope was justice for the children and adults who were sexually abused by the church’s own wounded, Catholic clergy.
Changes from Benedict
Francis’s 2013 election path was paved with Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to resign and retire after 600 years.
Francis was not embarrassed by Benedict’s potentially unpleasant shadow. Francis accepted him as an elder politician and advisor, and worked with him from his corridor retirement to participate in the public life of the church until Benedict’s death in 2022.
“It’s like having your grandfather at home, like a smart grandfather,” Francis said.
Francis’ loose liturgical style and idyllic priorities reveal that he and the German-born theologian came from very different religious traditions, and Francis directly overturned some of his predecessors’ decisions.
He confirmed that Salvador Archbishop Oscar Romero, a hero of the Latin American liberation theology movement, was canoed after his incident plagued the bent concerns of Credo’s Marxists under Benedict.
Francis reimposed restrictions for Benedict to celebrate the relaxed old Latin Mass, claiming it was divisive. The move struck Francis’ traditionalist critics and launched a sustained conflict with right-wing Catholics, particularly in the United States.
Conservatives are against Francis
By then, the conservatives had already turned their backs on Francis, but were betrayed after opening up the argument that if the remarried Catholics were not nullified, they allowed the remarried Catholics to receive the sacrament.
“We don’t like this Pope,” Italian conservative everyday Il Foglio found a few months after the Pope, reflecting the unrest of the small but vocal traditionalist Catholic movement.
These same critics amplified their complaints after Francis approved the church blessings of the same-sex couple and approved a controversial agreement with China for the bishop’s appointment.
The details were never made public, but conservative critics defeated it as a sold-out to communist China, but the Vatican defended it as the best deal they could get.
The American Cardinal Raymond Burke, who is the opposite of anti-Francis, said the church has become “like a ship without a rudder.”
Burke has been a campaign of his opposition for years since Francis fired him as Vatican Supreme Court judge and culminated in the opposition of Francis’ 2023 meeting on Francis’ future.
Francis eventually granted Burke financially, accusing him of sowing “disincentives.”
Francis claimed that his bishop and cardinals were immersed in the “smell of their flocks” and served the discomfort of the voice, faithful when they did not.
His 2014 Christmas speech to Vatican Curia was one of the greatest public pope’s responsibilities to date. Standing in the marble apostle palace, Francis carved 15 illnesses that he said could torment his closest collaborators, including “spiritual Alzheimer’s disease.”
Trying to eliminate corruption, Francis oversaw the reforms of the Vatican Bank in line with the scandal, attempting to tackle Vatican officials on the financial line, limiting their ability to receive compensation and gifts or award public contracts.
He has allowed Vatican police to raid his own secretariat and the Vatican financial watchdog amid suspicions about an EUR 350 million investment in a London real estate venture. 2 After a year and a half trial, the Vatican court convicted Angelo Bexiu, a once-influential cardinal, of embezzlement, and returned a mixed verdict to nine, which acquitted them.
However, the trial proved to be a reputable boomerang of the Holy Sea, showing the flaws in the Vatican legal system, the eerie battle of the grass among Monsignors, and how the Pope intervened on behalf of the prosecutors.
While praising the Vatican’s attempt to turn the Vatican’s finances around, Francis angered US conservatives with the frequent expansion of global financial markets.
Economic justice is an important theme in his Holy See, and when he said he wanted a “poor church for the poor,” he did not hide it in his first meeting with the journalists.
In his first major educational document, The Joy of the Gospel, Francis accused the trickle-down economic theory of being proven and naive.
“Money must serve, not dominance!” he said by urging political reform.
Some US conservatives branded Francis Marxist. He went backwards saying he had many Marxist friends.
Soccer, opera, prayer
Born in Buenos Aires on December 17, 1936, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was the eldest of five Italian immigrants.
He believed he taught him how to pray for his devout grandmother Rosa. On the weekend I listened to operas on the radio, went to Mass, and attended matches at the family’s beloved San Lorenzo soccer club. As Pope, his love for football brought him a huge collection of jerseys from visitors.
He received a religious call at the age of 17 during his confession, and in his 2010 biographer, “I don’t know what it is, but it changed my life…I realized they were waiting for me.”
He entered the parish seminary, but in 1958 he switched to Jesuit order and was attracted to its missionary tradition and extremists.
Around this time he suffered from pneumonia, which removed part of his right lung. His frail health prevented him from becoming a missionary, and his stubborn lung ability was probably responsible for his voice and his whispers reluctant to sing in Mass.
On December 13, 1969, he was appointed priest and soon began teaching. In 1973 he was appointed head of the Jesuits of Argentina. The appointment, which he later admitted to being “crazy” because he was 36, “had been accused of making my authoritarian and prompt decisions, having serious problems and being super conservative,” he admitted in an interview with Civilta Cattolica.
Living under an Argentine dictatorship
His six-year tenure as Argentine command chief coincided with the dictatorship of the country’s murders of 1976-83 when the military launched a campaign against left-wing guerrillas and other regime opponents.
Bergoglio was accused of not openly confronting the junta and effectively allowing the two slum priests to be lured and tortured for not publicly supporting their work.
For decades he refused to counter that version of the event. Only in a biographer certified in 2010 he ultimately recounted the lengths he used to save them, calling out the priests of the family of the feared dictator Jorge Videra with illness and persuading them to be able to celebrate Mass instead. Once he reached Junta’s leader’s house, Belgolio personally pleaded for mercy. Both priests were eventually released.
As Pope, descriptions of many people (priests, seminaries, political dissidents) that Belgolian actually saved during the “dirty war” began to emerge, helping them maintain secrets in seminary and letting the country escape.
Bergoglio went to Germany in 1986 to research papers that never ended. Back in Argentina, he was stationed in Cordoba during what is described as an era of “a great internal crisis.” Unfavoured by more progressive Jesuit leaders, he was eventually saved from obscurity in 1992 by St. John Paul II, who was named Auxiliary Bishop of Buenos Aires. He became archbishop six years later and in 2001 he became a cardinal.
He became Pope in 2005 when Benedict was elected, and bowed after winning the second vote in several rounds.
