Yesterday he gave his Easter blessing, today, Pope Francis dead at 88

Pope Francis, the 266th successor to St. Peter, has passed away at the age of 88.

The Pope's death was reported by the Vatican as having occurred at 7:35 this morning in his residence at Santa Marta. The announcement comes as a surprise after the Pope spent 38 days in hospital but has been recovering. On Easter Sunday, he gave the "urbi et orbi" blessing after a week of various public (albeit brief) appearances.

Francis was elected pope on March 13, 2013, two weeks after Pope Benedict XVI left office by resigning. He was the first pope from the Americas, the first Jesuit, and the first to take the name Francis. 

Until then he was Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

From the beginning of his pontificate, Francis insisted that the Church needs to “get out of the sacristy.” He condemned clericalism and urged bishops, priests, and faithful to go to the margins of society, to see the Church as a field hospital for the healing of souls, to meet people and not wait for people to come. He sought to convey the message that no one should feel excluded from the love and mercy of God. He dedicated a jubilee year to mercy.

For decades to come, scholars will study the way the Church changed under the Francis papacy, whether formally or in spirit. Early utterances from the Pope, such as “Who am I to judge?” gave the global media occasion to speak of him as more open and accepting. Toward the end of his life, Francis more and more insisted that the Church was for “todos,” in his native Spanish – for everyone. 

However, he was perhaps the most expressive critic of abortion to ever sit on Peter's Chair, saying that the practice is the same as what the ancient Spartans used to do, and like "hiring a hitman." He was equally critical of euthanasia, saying that it is more about dollar signs than compassion.

The Pope defined himself as a son of the Church and promoted a wide variety of traditional devotions and prayers, from the wounds of Christ, to the Rosary. He called St. Joseph his closest friend, added his name to all Eucharistic Prayers, and devoted a year to the father of Jesus, releasing a document "With a Father's Heart." He wrote documents on other saints (Sts. Therese, Francis de Sales) and one on devotion to the Sacred Heart.

Critics warned that a footnote in one of Francis’ apostolic exhortations would open the way for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to be allowed Holy Communion. Fiducia Supplicans, a 2023 declaration not issued by Francis himself but by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, created an uproar for allowing the blessing of same-sex couples and others in irregular situations. Catholics were quick to point out that anyone (and even many things) can receive a blessing.

Francis appointed women to high Vatican positions and allowed laity a vote in the Synod of Bishops. And that Synod met two years in a row to consider ways the Church can become more synodal in its decision-making and governance – a theme close to Francis’ heart. The Pope made big changes to the Curia and also carried forward the effort Benedict XVI had made to combat the problem of sexual abuse.

The conclave that will elect his successor is full of cardinals that come from surprising backgrounds: Francis picked bishops not so much from “cardinalatial" sees where an incoming bishop could expect a red had but from far-flung places in third-world countries – representative of the “margins” to which Francis encouraged disciples of Jesus to go.

In terms of geopolitics, Francis had a lot to handle, with so many wars breaking out around the world that at many points he commented that World War III is being fought piecemeal. The call for peace was perhaps the Pope's most often-repeated exhortation: War is madness, he said over and over again.

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on December 17, 1936, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was the eldest of five children born to Mario Bergoglio, a native of the Piedmont region of Italy, and Regina Sivori, an Argentine of Piedmontese descent. Today, only a sister, María Elena Bergoglio, survives him, as well as several nieces and nephews.

As an adolescent, Jorge attended a Salesian school and got to know Fr. Stepan Czmil, a missionary from Ukraine. Young Jorge frequently woke early in order to assist Fr. Czmil at the Byzantine Divine Liturgy. 

Jorge graduated from a technical secondary school and worked as a chemical technician (as well as a bouncer and a janitor). But he soon chose to enter the diocesan seminary of Villa Devoto. In 1957, at the age of 21, he became very ill with pneumonia, and part of his right lung had to be removed. But the following March, he entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus, professing his first vows in 1960. 

He completed his studies of the humanities in Chile and returned to Argentina in 1963 to graduate with a degree in philosophy from the Colegio de San José in San Miguel. He taught literature and psychology at Immaculate Conception College in Santa Fé and at the Colegio del Salvatore in Buenos Aires. 

From 1967 to 1970, Bergoglio studied theology and obtained a degree from the Colegio de San José.

He was ordained a priest on December 13, 1969, by Ramón José Castellano, Archbishop Emeritus of Córdoba, Argentina. He continued his training at the University of Alcalá de Henares, Spain, and on April 22, 1973, made his final profession as a Jesuit. Back in Argentina, he was novice master at Villa Barilari, San Miguel; professor at the Faculty of Theology of San Miguel; consultor to the Jesuit province and Rector of the Colegio Máximo of the Faculty of Philosophy and Theology.

On July 31, 1973, he was appointed Provincial of the Jesuits in Argentina, an office he held for six years. He then resumed his university work and from 1980 to 1986 served again as rector of the Colegio de San José, as well as parish priest, again in San Miguel. In March 1986, he went to Germany to finish his doctoral thesis. His superiors then sent him to the Colegio del Salvador in Buenos Aires and to the Jesuit Church in the city of Córdoba as spiritual director and confessor.

Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, wanted Bergoglio as a close collaborator, and on May 20, 1992, Pope John Paul II appointed the 55-year-old Bergoglio Auxiliary Bishop of Buenos Aires. On May 27, he received episcopal ordination from Cardinal Quarracino in the cathedral. He chose as his episcopal motto “miserando atque eligendo.” The words come from a homily by the Venerable Bede on the Feast of St. Matthew, which reads: “Vidit ergo Jesus publicanum, et quia miserando atque eligendo vidit, ait illi, ‘Sequere me.’” 

“This homily is a tribute to Divine Mercy and is read during the Liturgy of the Hours on the Feast of St. Matthew,” the Vatican website explains. “This has particular significance in the life and spirituality of the Pope. In fact, on the Feast of St. Matthew in 1953, the young Jorge Bergoglio experienced, at the age of 17, in a very special way, the loving presence of God in his life. Following confession, he felt his heart touched and he sensed the descent of the Mercy of God, who with a gaze of tender love, called him to religious life, following the example of St. Ignatius of Loyola.”

On June 3, 1997, Bishop Bergoglio became Coadjutor Archbishop of Buenos Aires. Upon the death of Cardinal Quarracino, he succeeded him on February 28, 1998, as Archbishop, Primate of Argentina and Ordinary for Eastern-rite faithful in Argentina who have no Ordinary of their own.

Three years later at the Consistory of February 21, 2001, Pope John Paul II created him cardinal. Bergoglio asked the faithful of Buenos Aires not to come to Rome to celebrate his entry into the College of Cardinals, but rather to donate to the poor what they would have spent on the journey. 

As an archbishop, he reportedly lived an austere life, using public transportation and cooking his own meals. Time Magazine, recognizing Francis as the 2013 Person of the Year, recounted how Cardinal Bergoglio would regularly visit the most desolate parts of his archdiocese.

He “made room in his schedule every year for a pastoral visit to this place of squalor and sorrow,” the magazine wrote.­” He would walk to the subway station nearest to the Metropolitan Cathedral, … Traveling alone, he would transfer onto a graffiti-blasted tram to Mariano Acosta, reaching where the subways do not go. He finished the journey on foot, moving heavily in his bulky black orthopedic shoes along Pasaje C. On other days, there were other journeys to barrios throughout the city—so many in need of so much, but none too poor or too filthy for a visit from this itinerant prince of the church. Reza por mí, he asked almost everyone he met. Pray for me.”

In October 2001, Cardinal Bergoglio was appointed General Relator to the 10th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Episcopal Ministry. This task was entrusted to him at the last minute to replace Cardinal Edward M. Egan, Archbishop of New York, who was obliged to stay in his homeland because of the terrorist attacks on September 11. At the Synod he placed particular emphasis on “the prophetic mission of the bishop,” his role as a “prophet of justice,” his duty to “preach ceaselessly” the social doctrine of the Church and also “to express an authentic judgment in matters of faith and morals.”

Meanwhile, in April 2005, he took part in the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI. There have been rumors that Bergoglio was almost elected as pope. 

In a book-length interview published in April 2024, El Sucesor, Francis confided that Cardinal Ratzinger “was my candidate.” Francis explained that at one point, he had 40 of the 115 votes, which could have been enough to block the candidacy of the theologian from Germany.

“The maneuver consisted in putting my name forward, blocking Ratzinger’s election, and then negotiating a third candidate,” he said. 

“They were using me,” he said.

But he felt that Ratzinger “was the only one who could be pope at that time,” he said. “After the revolution of John Paul II, who had been a dynamic pontiff, very active, with initiative, who traveled, what was needed was a pope who could maintain a healthy balance, a transitional pope.”

“If they had elected someone like me, who makes a lot of mess, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything,” he said.

But he had enough to do in Buenos Aires, an archdiocese with more than three million inhabitants. As archbishop, Bergoglio conceived of a missionary project based on communion and evangelization that in many ways foreshadows his papacy. He had four main goals: open and brotherly communities, an informed laity playing a leading role, evangelization efforts addressed to every inhabitant of the city, and assistance to the poor and the sick. 

And, in what perhaps made him known to the universal Church despite being from the end of the world, he was vocal in opposing Argentina's work to approve same-sex marriage. He advocated a civil agreement that would protect the long-held understanding of marriage.

In September 2009 he launched a solidarity campaign for Argentina’s bicentenary of independence. Two hundred charitable agencies were to be set up by 2016. And on a continental scale, he expected much from the impact of the message of the Aparecida Conference in 2007.

Cardinal Christophe Pierre, papal nuncio to the United States since 2016, noted the importance of the Aparacida Conference, especially in light of how the Francis Pontificate would turn out. 

Known formally as the Fifth Conference of CELAM (the Episcopal Conference of Latin America and the Caribbean), it took place in Aparecida, Brazil, just before Cardinal Pierre took up his duties as papal nuncio to Mexico. It was, he said, “a kind of synodal process of the South American bishops.”

“This is the only continent that has made such a synodal process,” Pierre told America magazine in 2023. “The bishops developed a kind of dynamic of working together and looking for solutions together, to evangelize better, which is what the synod [on synodality] is all about. Nothing else: Better evangelization. And they accompanied the people in their suffering, in their difficulties, and in their challenges.”

At Aparecida, the bishops decided to write a document to address “the difficulty to transmit the faith from one generation to the next” in a new cultural context. Cardinal Bergoglio was put in charge of the writing commission.

Prior to his papacy, he authored three books: Meditaciones para religiosos (1982), Reflexiones sobre la vida apostólica (1992) and Reflexiones de esperanza (1992).

Since his papacy began, his name has been on other books as author: Life. My Story in History, written with Vatican journalist Fabio Marchese Ragona (2024), and Hope: The Autobiography, with Carlo Musso (2025).

After Benedict’s resignation in February 2013, Bergoglio was one of several cardinals to give an intervention before the conclave began its secret voting. It is thought that this speech is what got the attention of many of the cardinal-electors. He lamented that the Church had become “self-referential” to the point of sickness, immersed in a self-destructive “theological narcissism.” It had forgotten its mission.

“Jesus says that he is at the door and knocks,” said the cardinal from Latin America. “Obviously, the text refers to his knocking from the outside in order to enter. But I think about the times in which Jesus knocks from within so that we will let him come out. The self-referential Church keeps Jesus Christ within herself and does not let him out.”

Bergoglio was 76 when he was elected Bishop of Rome on March 13, 2013. 

The major teaching documents issued during Pope Francis’ pontificate include three encyclicals: Lumen Fidei (On Faith, June 29, 2013); Laudato si' (On Care for Our Common Home, June 18, 2015); Fratelli Tutti (On Fraternity and Social Friendship, October 3, 2020), and Dilexit nos (On the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ, October 24, 2024).

Lumen Fidei was Francis' completion of a draft by Benedict XVI, who almost finished a trilogy of encyclicals on the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. 

An important early document that was not an encyclical was Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), an apostolic exhortation on the proclamation of the Gospel in today's world. Released November 24, 2013, it contains, the pope said, "guidelines which can encourage and guide the whole Church in a new phase of evangelization." He asked Catholics to leave their "comfort zone" and go to the “peripheries” of society that are in need of the light of the Gospel.

“Evangelizers thus take on the ‘smell of the sheep’ and the sheep are willing to hear their voice,” he said. 

As Francis advanced in age, various health issues cropped up, including flare-ups of his longstanding sciatica, and painful knees that required use of a cane or a wheelchair. Beginning in 2023, he had several bouts of influenza and bronchitis, as well as difficulty breathing. He spent nine days in hospital in June 2023, when he had surgery to repair an abdominal hernia. In July 2021, diverticulitis required removal of 13 inches of colon. 

This year was his longest health struggle, with 38 days in hospital fighting double pneumonia. At least twice during his hospitalization, doctors admitted he was very near death.

A full obituary will be published soon.