Pope Francis Has Died At Age 88

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Pope Francis, the 266th leader of the Roman Catholic Church who ushered in a progressive era for the Vatican, died Monday. He was 88.

Francis’ death follows a five-week hospitalization in February and March, initially for bronchitis and then also for pneumonia in both of his lungs. He was released March 23 and had just celebrated Easter Mass on Sunday. 

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Camerlengo of the Apostolic Chamber, made the announcement at the Casa Santa Marta, where Francis had lived since becoming pope in 2013.

“Dearest brothers and sisters, with deep sorrow I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis,” he said. “At 7:35 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 of His Church.”

He added: “He taught us to live the values of the Gospel with fidelity, courage, and universal love, especially in favor of the poorest and most marginalized. 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.”

The pope, who had part of one lung removed when he was younger following an infection, was hospitalized twice in 2023, first for bronchitis and later to remove intestinal scar tissue and repair a hernia in his abdominal wall. That surgery followed doctors removing 13 inches of his large intestine in 2021 due to bulges that had formed in his colon’s intestinal wall. That procedure is believed to have resulted in the problematic scarring.

In 2023, Francis was forced to cancel an appearance at the COP28 climate conference due to the flu and lung inflammation. In 2022, the pope also needed to delay a trip to Congo and South Sudan because of knee inflammation. The injury resulted in Francis needing to use a wheelchair and a walker for over a year.

People around the world mourned the death of the first pontiff from the Americas, who took the world by storm after a conclave of cardinals elected him to be pope in 2013. The Argentine succeeded Pope Benedict XVI, who, in a nearly unprecedented move, resigned in February of that same year.

Now, the conclave will gather again to deliberate over who will succeed Francis.

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Francis led the church through a period of significant demographic change, as Catholic populations declined in Europe and the United States, expanded in Africa, and faced competition from Pentecostal Protestantism in Latin America. One of Francis’ most enduring legacies will be his reshaping of the church’s hierarchy to reflect these shifts. Francis has packed the College of Cardinals, which elects popes, with bishops from Africa, Asia and South America.

Throughout his papacy, Francis pushed the church to become less “obsessed” with culture war issues such as gay marriage and abortion, encouraging clergy and lay Catholics to pay more attention to the refugee crisis, climate change, human trafficking and the global arms trade.

He also shepherded the church through the COVID-19 pandemic, canceling large public gatherings and Masses at St. Peter’s Basilica in an effort to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. The cancellations led to extraordinary and historic scenes at the Vatican ― a near-empty St. Peter’s Square on Good Friday, followed months later by a socially distanced Christmas Day address at the Apostolic Palace, the pope’s official residence. Francis urged government leaders and businesses to ensure the COVID-19 vaccine reached the “most vulnerable and needy of all regions of the planet.”

But Francis’ legacy will inevitably be challenged by his early missteps in handling the Catholic Church’s clerical sexual abuse crisis. During his papacy, the church faced a renewed reckoning over abuse, with high-profile scandals in the U.S., Poland, France and Chile toppling prominent figures.

Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the pope accomplished many “firsts” before even beginning his official papal duties. He was the first pope from the Americas, the first Jesuit to be named pope and the first to take the name of Francis, after St. Francis of Assisi ― protector of the environment and of the poor.

But Francis first and foremost described himself as a “sinner,” saying in an interview shortly after his election: “This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.”

Born on Dec. 17, 1936, Francis was the eldest of five children. His father was an Italian immigrant and his mother was an Argentine of Italian descent. As a young adult, Francis had an affinity for tango dancing, worked as a bouncer at a nightclub and trained in chemistry before entering seminary. 

After being ordained in 1969, he went on to serve as the head of Argentina’s chapter of the Society of Jesus, the Catholic Church’s Jesuit order.

At the age of 36, Francis found himself leading the country’s Jesuit order just as Argentina was entering its so-called “dirty war,” a period of violence and unrest in which thousands of people were kidnapped, tortured and killed. Some would later question his silence amid the violent tactics of the military regime; many religious leaders did the same to protect themselves at the time.

The pontiff’s critics, including journalist Horacio Verbitsky, accused him of withdrawing protection orders from two Jesuit priests, Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics, during a time when Argentina’s military dictatorship was persecuting priests for their humanitarian work in the slums.

Yorio and Jalics were kidnapped by officers in May 1976 and held and tortured for five months.

“I had to deal with difficult situations, and I made my decisions abruptly and by myself,” Francis said in a 2014 interview. He also acknowledged that the experience led him to adopt an “authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions,” which later challenged his popularity in the Jesuit community.

By the late 1980s, the new Jesuit leaders grappled with what to do with Bergoglio. He had alienated many Jesuits both for his refusal to criticize the military dictatorship and for discouraging the study of liberation theology, a political and socially progressive philosophy that spread through Latin America in the 20th century. Always socially minded, Bergoglio favored sending young Jesuits to work in the fields ― rather than studying from books ― as a way of helping poor farmers in the surrounding areas.  

In 1990, Jesuit leaders sent him to Cordoba, a city some 400 miles west of Buenos Aires, where he entered a period of prayer and reflection. For two years, Bergoglio spent his days praying, doing chores and seeing the occasional visitor who came inquiring after his health. He didn’t drink, rarely watched TV and only occasionally socialized, Ricardo Spinassi, who worked as the housekeeper at Bergoglio’s residence at the time, told CNN.

The Rev. Juan Carlos Scannone, a fellow Jesuit who had known Bergoglio since the 1950s, called the time in Cordoba “a spiritual purification, a dark night.”

In a paradoxical turn of events, wrote religion reporter David Gibson, Bergoglio’s “virtual estrangement from the Jesuits” may have influenced Buenos Aires Cardinal Antonio Quarracino’s decision to appoint him an assistant bishop in 1992.

Six years later, Bergoglio succeeded Quarracino as archbishop, and in 2001, Pope John Paul II made him a cardinal. In 2005, he was the runner-up in the conclave that elected Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, leading some to speculate in 2013 that he would be the pick for pope despite his advanced age.

“Humility is above all God’s way: God humbles himself to walk with his people,” Francis said during a Palm Sunday homily in 2015.

His personal style was humble, but none could deny his celebrity-like aura. Within the first year of his papacy, Francis graced the covers of Rolling Stone, Time, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and other popular magazines. Time magazine named him “person of the year” in 2013, and a superhero character was even made in his image (though Francis wasn’t too happy about it).

Within weeks of being declared pope, the pontiff set the stage for what would be a papacy full of surprises by including women for the first time in the Maundy Thursday foot washing ceremony.

Four months later, Francis uttered the five words that would go down in history when he said “Who am I to judge?” in response to a question about gay priests. He went on to emphasize compassion toward the LGBTQ+ community throughout his papacy, later stating that the Catholic Church owed gay people an apology.

“The Church must ask forgiveness for not behaving many times ― when I say the Church, I mean Christians! The Church is holy, we are sinners!” he said during a June 2016 press conference.

In teaching, though, Francis did not diverge from conservative Catholic doctrine on topics like women’s roles and sexual orientation, maintaining that priesthood was reserved only for men, that marriage was intended to be between a man and a woman and that gender transitions were against “the order of creation.”

In 2023, however, Francis suggested that there could be ways to bless same-sex unions, so long as such blessings aren’t confused with sacramental marriage. He has also voiced support for civil laws that extend legal benefits to same-sex spouses, and spoke out against efforts to criminalize homosexuality.

In June 2015, he invoked his namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, by releasing an extensive encyclical, or papal letter, on the environment. Titled “Laudato Si,” the encyclical acknowledged human beings’ role in the degradation of the planet and affirmed the moral imperative of caring for the Earth.

On the day of the letter’s release, the pontiff tweeted, “The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. These problems are closely linked to a throwaway culture.”
The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.

— Apostolica Sedes Vacans (@Pontifex) June 18, 2015

Francis was no stranger to politics. In 2014, he helped broker a deal between the U.S. and Cuba that not only brought about the release of U.S. subcontractor Alan Gross, who had been imprisoned in the country for five years, but also ushered in a new era of U.S.-Cuba relations.

“I pray for an end to wars, conflicts and the great suffering caused by human agency, by epidemics past and present, and by the devastation wrought by natural disasters,” Francis said in December of that year. 

The pope repeatedly spoke out against the war between Russia and Ukraine, as well as the violence in Gaza. In 2023, Francis begged for an end to what he called “the passions that are killing everyone.”

“Here we’ve gone beyond war. This isn’t war anymore, this is terrorism,” Francis said after meeting with relatives of both Palestinians in Gaza and of hostages being held by Hamas. “Please, let us go ahead with peace. Pray for peace, pray a lot for peace.”

Francis worked to create a culture of openness in the church where others had built walls ― as in the case of ministering to divorced Catholics.

“A pastor cannot feel that it is enough to simply apply moral laws to those living in ‘irregular’ situations, as if they were stones to throw at people’s lives,” he wrote in an April 2016 document titled “Amoris Laetitia,” Latin for “The Joy of Love.”  

Time and again, Francis demonstrated his commitment to the poor, homeless and disenfranchised. Under his watch, the Vatican opened a homeless shelter and provided showers and haircuts for people living on the streets around Vatican City.

“Oh, how I would like a poor Church, and for the poor,” he told reporters soon after his election as pope.

He visited islands off Italy and Greece where refugees were making the perilous journey from Libya, Syria and surrounding countries. He helped resettle several refugee families in Italy and encouraged other Catholics to stand up for migrants.

“As people of faith, we wish to join our voices to speak out on your behalf,” Francis said, addressing migrants. “We hope that the world will heed these scenes of tragic and indeed desperate need, and respond in a way worthy of our common humanity.”

He also spoke out against the Donald Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts in the U.S. In a letter sent to U.S. bishops in early 2025, he asked “not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters” while likening today’s migrants to Jesus, Mary and Joseph fleeing violence to Egypt. 

As he worked to encourage Catholics’ outreach to the world, the pope also faced criticism within his own flock. In the U.S., a small wing of doctrine-minded conservatives pushed back against Francis’ welcoming brand of Catholicism, insisting that the pope’s approach to some issues ― such as distributing the Eucharist to divorced, remarried couples ― could have the effect of muddying long-standing church teachings.

Francis acknowledged his conservative opponents in 2019, saying, “For me, it’s an honor if the Americans attack me.” He lamented that people promoting schisms have allowed ideology to become “detached” from Catholic doctrine.

“Doing this, you lose the true tradition and you turn to ideologies to have support. In other words, ideologies replace faith,” Francis told Portuguese Jesuits of the U.S. Catholic Church in a private meeting in August 2023.

“The vision of the doctrine of the church as a monolith is wrong. When you go backward, you make something closed off, disconnected from the roots of the church,” he continued. “I want to remind these people that backwardness is useless, and they must understand that there’s a correct evolution in the understanding of questions of faith and morals” that allows for doctrine to progress over time.

Francis’ handling of the church’s sex abuse crisis also attracted criticism. In January 2018, Francis shocked survivors by accusing victims of Chile’s most notorious pedophile of “calumny” ― or slander. Months later, a Pennsylvania grand jury investigation revealed that six Roman Catholic dioceses in the state had covered up sexual abuse by 301 “predator priests” over the course of 70 years. The 884-page report proved to be one of the largest, most comprehensive investigations on the church’s sex abuse scandal and identified over 1,000 known victims.

In a statement following the report’s release, Francis condemned a culture in the church that led some religious leaders to be more concerned about their reputation than the safety of children.

“With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives,” he wrote. “We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them.” 

In February 2019, Francis defrocked former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick after finding the cleric guilty of sexually abusing minors and adult seminarians over decades. It was the first time a former Catholic cardinal was expelled from the priesthood for sexual abuse. A Vatican report later found that several different bishops, cardinals and popes dismissed evidence of McCarrick’s misconduct and allowed him to rise through the ranks of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy. The report, which Francis commissioned and ordered published, avoided pinning blame on Francis for the scandal.

Francis abolished pontifical secrecy for sex abuse cases, which allowed civil authorities to access reports, testimonies and documents. He also issued a law requiring all Catholic priests and nuns to report clergy sex abuse and cover-ups to church authorities. Still, some survivors’ groups think he didn’t do enough to sanction bishops who covered up for sexually abusive priests, to hold bishops accountable in the future, or to ensure the release of church documentation on abuse cases.