Pope Francis, history’s first Latin American pontiff who charmed the world with his humble style and concern for the poor but alienated conservatives with critiques of capitalism and climate change, died Monday morning. He was 88.
Bells tolled in churches from his native Argentina to the Philippines and across Rome as news spread around the world.
“At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the home of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and of his Church,” Cardinal Kevin Farrell said from the chapel of the Domus Santa Marta, where Francis lived.
Francis, who suffered from chronic lung disease and had part of one lung removed as a young man, was admitted to Gemelli hospital on February 14, 2025, for a respiratory crisis that developed into double pneumonia. He spent 38 days there, the longest hospitalisation of his 12-year papacy.
He made his last public appearance on Easter Sunday — a day before his death — to bless thousands of people in St Peter’s Square, drawing wild cheers and applause. Beforehand, he met US Vice President JD Vance.
Francis performed the blessing from the same loggia where he was introduced on March 13, 2013, as the 266th pope.
From his first greeting that night — a remarkably normal “Buonasera” (“Good evening”) — to his embrace of refugees and the downtrodden, Francis signaled a very different tone for the papacy, stressing humility over hubris for a Catholic Church beset by scandal and accusations of indifference.
The Argentine-born Jorge Mario Bergoglio brought a breath of fresh air into a 2 000-year-old institution that had seen its influence wane during the troubled tenure of Pope Benedict XVI, whose surprise resignation led to Francis’ election.
But Francis soon invited troubles of his own, and conservatives grew increasingly upset with his progressive bent, outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics and crackdown on traditionalists. His greatest test came in 2018 when he botched a notorious case of clergy sexual abuse in Chile, and the scandal that festered under his predecessors erupted anew.
And then Francis, the crowd-loving, globe-trotting pope of the peripheries, navigated the unprecedented reality of leading a universal religion through the coronavirus pandemic from a locked-down Vatican City.
“We have realized that we are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented,” Francis told an empty St Peter’s Square in March 2020. Calling for a rethink of the global economic framework, he said the pandemic showed the need for “all of us to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other.”
World leaders on Monday extolled Francis’ commitment to the marginalised. French President Emmanuel Macron, whose country is largely Catholic, wrote on X: “From Buenos Aires to Rome, Pope Francis wanted the church to bring joy and hope to the poorest. … May this hope forever outlast him.”
Flags flew at half-staff in Italy, and crowds gathered in St Peter’s Square. When the great bells of St Peter’s Basilica began tolling, tourists stopped in their tracks to record the moment on their phones.
Francis’ death sets off a weekslong process of allowing the faithful to pay their final respects, first for Vatican officials in the Santa Marta chapel and then in St Peter’s for the general public, followed by a funeral and a conclave to elect a new pope. (Associated Press)