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POPE FRANCIS HAS died at the age of 88. In a statement, the Vatican said: “Pope Francis died on Easter Monday, April 21, 2025, at the age of 88 at his residence in the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta.” He was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio on 17 December 1936, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
His Italian grandparents emigrated to Argentina in 1929, travelling in third-class boat while his grandmother hid her possessions in the lining of her jacket. Francis was also the head of the Jesuit order in Argentina from 1973 to 1979, during the country’s brutal military dictatorship. Following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI on 28 February 2013, a papal conclave elected the then-Argentine cardinal as his successor on 13 March, 2013.
He was the first pontiff to adopt the papal name Francis, and did so in honour of St Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of the poor and animals. Francis was also the first Jesuit to become pope. Francis was and his hospital stay was later extended due to a “complex clinical picture”.
The Pope asked for more openness about his health as he received treatment and evening updates provided by the Vatican revealed the seriousness of his condition in stark terms. Francis’s bronchitis later developed into pneumonia in both lungs, which sparked widespread alarm as he had part of a lung removed as a young man. Francis made tackling climate change one of the cornerstones of his papacy and published an encyclical in 2015 titled Laudato Si, Last month, he became the first sitting pope to publish a memoir and in it, Francis was working right up to his hospitalisation and in one of his last public actions, .
He also Francis continued to work while in hospital, spending 20 minutes with , , and Indeed, doctors said they were afraid to send him back to the Santa Marta apartments as they feared he would “start working again as before”. In October, in a move that cemented his mark on the group that will soon gather to elect his successor. One of the people elected to the College of Cardinals by Francis was Father Timothy Radcliffe.
Radcliffe has often publicly challenged the Catholic Church’s teaching on LGBTQ+ issues and publicly raised the issue during the In his autobiography, Francis revealed that he had a “feeling” that his papacy would be “brief, no more than three or four years”. “I never imagined that I would have made all those journeys to more than sixty countries,” he wrote. One of these countries included Ireland.
Francis arrived for a two-day visit in August 2018 as part of the World Meeting of Families, a Catholic festival held every three years in a different country to discuss what it means to be a Catholic family. During a mass in the Phoenix Park, the pope asked forgiveness for “abuses in Ireland, abuses of power, conscience and sexual abuses” perpetrated by Church leaders. Elsewhere in Dublin, a large crowd marched in silence to remember abuse victims and express their anger and hurt over the Catholic Church’s historical role in Irish life.
Francis also revealed in his autobiography that he will not be buried in St Peter’s Basilica, writing: “The Vatican is the home of my last service, not my eternal home.” Instead, Francis will be buried at the Santa Maria Maggiore, one of four papal basilicas in Rome. He also described the funeral service planned for him as “excessive” and “arranged with the master of ceremonies to lighten it”.
“No catafalque, no ceremony for the closure of the casket, nor the deposition of the cypress casket into a second of lead and a third of oak,” wrote Francis. “With dignity, but like any Christian, because the bishop of Rome is a pastor and a disciple, not a powerful man of this world.” In his memoir, Francis said he had received many blessings but when reflecting on his own mortality, he asked “the Lord for just one more”.
“Look after me. Let it happen whenever You wish, but, as You know, I’m not very brave when it comes to physical pain..
. So, please, don’t make me suffer too much.” And further reflecting on his own death, Francis wrote: “Our time is pressing: When you want to seize today, it is already yesterday; and if you want to seize tomorrow, it is not yet there.
“These years of my papacy have been a life of tension, looking beyond. “The journey of the Church, our lives, the foundation of our joy, the reason for our hope – these are dependent on the Lord, and certainly not on convenience or trends. “And when we are rather more tired, the Lord knows even when to take us in his arms.
” Official health updates provided to the media during the pontiff’s hospitalisation stressed that Francis had been regularly sitting in an armchair in his room, and he was said to be in good spirits in the days after his admission in mid-February. However confirmation that he had developed pneumonia in both lungs sparked widespread alarm, especially because he had part of his right lung cut away when he was 21, after developing pleurisy that almost killed him. He had been using a wheelchair since 2022 because of persistent knee pain and then used a cane during rare moments standing up.
In recent years, Francis also had colon and hernia surgery. While Francis said that “even during the days of surgery I never thought of resigning”, he nevertheless acknowledged that resigning was “always a possibility” and that had he resigned, he would have remained in Rome, “as emeritus bishop”. Francis also wrote in his memoir that he “had the feeling” his papacy would be “brief, no more than three or four years”.
“I never imagined that I would have made all those journeys to more than sixty countries,” he wrote..
