By Rob Harris
London: Pope Francis, the reforming head of the Catholic Church who sought to modernise the pastoral and public priorities of the Vatican, has died at the age of 88.
The death of the Argentina-born Francis, a ground-breaking and progressive figure, was announced by Cardinal Kevin Farrell in a statement released by the Vatican on Easter Monday.
He said: “Dearest brothers and sisters, with deep sorrow I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis.
“At 7.35am this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and His Church.
“He taught us to live the values of the Gospel with fidelity, courage and universal love, especially in favour of the poorest and most marginalised.
“With immense gratitude for his example as a true disciple of the Lord Jesus, we commend the soul of Pope Francis to the infinite merciful love of the One and Triune God.”
Pope Francis waves to the crowd during a parade in Philadelphia in 2015.Credit: AP
Francis was the first pope to be born or raised outside Europe in 12 centuries, the first from the Americas and the first Jesuit to hold the role.
He died only a day after blessing thousands of people on Easter Sunday in the Vatican’s St Peter’s Square, surprising those gathered with a trip through the piazza in his popemobile, which drew cheers and applause. Beforehand, he met briefly with US Vice President J.D. Vance.
Francis, who had led the world’s 1.3 billion Roman Catholics since 2013, had been in increasingly poor health and pain, using a wheelchair or cane for more than a year after undergoing several operations, including major stomach surgery.
He had been convalescing at the Vatican after developing pneumonia in both lungs in February and spending 38 days in Rome’s Gemelli hospital. He was discharged on March 23.
In line with centuries-old church protocols, his death was first verified by the camerlengo – the Vatican’s overseer of property and revenues – who ceremonially called out the Pope’s baptismal name, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, three times. Upon receiving no response, he pronounced the Pope dead and informed church staff and the public.
Francis’ death will spark an official nine-day mourning period and weeks of intrigue as to who will succeed him in the role, with more than 140 cardinals to arrive at the Vatican within 15 to 20 days to begin the papal conclave, a secretive election process held to determine a successor.
His burial must take place between four and six days after his death, according to the Universi Dominici Gregis constitution that governs the papal transition, and the church will observe nine days of mourning during the papal interregnum.
While many popes are buried in the crypts beneath St Peter’s Basilica, Francis made it known in December 2023 that he wanted a vastly stripped-back funeral service and to be buried in Rome’s Basilica of Santa Maria. The funeral Mass is expected to be held in St Peter’s Square. The last pope to be buried outside the Vatican was Leo XIII, who died in 1903 and is buried in the Basilica of St John Lateran in Rome.
Cardinals will then lock themselves in the Sistine Chapel, disconnected from news media and telephones to block any outside influence, and undertake several rounds of voting until a candidate receives a two-thirds majority. The process could take days, if not weeks, before the result is announced when white smoke rises from the Sistine Chapel.
Francis was born in Buenos Aires in 1936. His reign was controversial from the beginning, when he was elected to the role following the shock resignation of former pope Benedict – the first pontiff to quit in 600 years. The pair formed a close bond in the almost 10 years that followed, when there were unusually two popes in the Vatican. Benedict died on the last day of 2022.
Francis, the 266th pontiff in the church’s 2000-year history, inherited the role at a time of great crisis and difficulty for the church, which had been battered by sexual abuse scandals, mired in financial mismanagement and polarised between conservatives and progressives.
Although he did not change doctrine, he was revolutionary in every other way by almost immediately attacking clericalism, seeking to empower the laity, promoting women to positions of power in the bureaucracy – although not ordaining them priests – and speaking out about climate change.
While he became known for his compassion and kindness, this did not apply to the clergy. He clashed publicly with the more conservative factions within the church and removed bishops who had not dealt forthrightly with sexual abuse. He also fought hard to reform the Holy See and Vatican City State, establishing an anti-corruption authority that carried out financial audits of entities belonging to them.
During the recent synod, during which Catholics around the world were asked about their vision for the future of the church, he called for “an ever more symphonic and synodal church”, using the metaphor of an orchestra to refer to divisions between progressives and conservatives, saying one section or instrument could not play alone or drown out the others. It was his job, as “conductor” to listen and try to achieve a “creative fidelity”.
He fought without great success to change the church’s power dynamics and give a greater voice to lay Catholics, including women, and people on the margins of society.
In an interview during his first year in office, he said he would not obsess over abortion, same-sex marriage and birth control since everyone knew what the church taught on these topics.
Late last year, Francis surprised many when he named 21 new cardinals in a power play that will ensure the now 140-member College of Cardinals – whose main job is to elect the next pope – is 80 per cent made up of those of his choosing.
The percentage of Asian and African cardinal electors has grown significantly – reflecting Francis’ quest to increase the church’s embrace of the developing world – while the proportion of those from Europe has fallen. His visit to the Philippines in January 2015 included the largest papal event in history, with an estimated 6 million attending his final Mass in Manila, surpassing the then-largest papal event at World Youth Day 1995 at the same venue 20 years earlier.
But his papacy also faced fierce criticism from within the ranks of the church, most famously when an essay was published in January 2023, thought to have been written by the late cardinal George Pell, condemning Francis as a “catastrophe” and depicting the Vatican’s political prestige “at a low ebb” while condemning his “grave failures to support human rights in Venezuela, Hong Kong, mainland China, and now in the Russian invasion”.
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