Pope Francis has died, aged 88, the Vatican has announced.
He led the Catholic Church for 12 years, having been elected in March 2013 following the historic resignation of his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI.
Francis recently left Rome’s Gemelli Hospital, where he was admitted on February 14 after having difficulty respiration.
It later emerged he was affected by a posh respiratory tract infection and double pneumonia, which may inflame and scar each lungs and makes respiration harder.
He had recovered to the extent where he was in a position to appear in front of crowds in St Peter’s Square for Easter Sunday, and met US Vice President JD Vance yesterday morning.
Francis was the primary Jesuit pope, the primary pope from the Americas, the primary from the Southern Hemisphere and the primary non-European pontiff since Pope Gregory III, greater than 1,000 years earlier.
His death triggers the beginning of the solemn process to elect a brand new pope, starting with the papal funeral in the approaching days and end with a plume of white smoke emanating from the Sistine Chapel.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the person who would change into Pope Francis, was born on December 17, 1936, in Buenos Aires.
He was the son of a migrant family who moved to Argentina from northern Italy.
Once destined to change into a person of science, he trained as an industrial chemist before a probability encounter with an unknown priest set him on the trail to priesthood.
Prior to his ordination in 1969, he went out with girls, danced the tango and even worked briefly as a nightclub bouncer.
In a 2010 biography, Bergoglio told authors Francesca Ambrogetti and Sergio Rubin: ‘I really like tango and I used to bounce after I was young.’
Of the girlfriend with whom he used to share this love of tango, he added: ‘She was one in all a bunch of friends I went dancing with. But then I discovered my religious vocation.’
He studied first within the diocesan seminary before moving to the Society of Jesus and was appointed head of the Jesuit province in Argentina aged 36 in 1973, remaining in post until 1979.
Bergoglio’s experiences of Argentina’s Dirty War within the Seventies and Eighties transformed the conservative, ambitious bishop right into a more compassionate priest.
He became Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998 and was appointed to the school of cardinals by Pope John Paul II in 2001.
His eventual election as pope was foreshadowed later that 12 months when he stepped in as the overall rapporteur of the Synod of Bishops that 12 months when Cardinal Edward Egan was called back to Recent York after the 9/11 attacks.
Argentine journalist and Francis biographer Elisabetta Piqué told the National Catholic Reporter in 2021: ‘Bergoglio’s role in that synod of 2001 was very necessary and crucial for his later election.
‘In reality, he worked so well as relator, replacing Egan, that he began being known and noticed in Rome as someone papabile.
‘From then on he remained on the radar of many cardinals — not only progressives — searching for a successor of John Paul II.’
The 2005 conclave to elect John Paul II’s successor is widely reported to have been a two-horse race between Joseph Ratzinger – the person who would soon change into Benedict XVI – and Bergoglio.
A conclave diary purporting to have been written by an anonymous cardinal within the Italian media claimed Bergoglio received 40 votes on the third ballot, just before Ratzinger crossed the two-thirds threshold and have become pope.
Following Benedict’s resignation in February 2013, Bergoglio was elected pope on March 13, taking the papal name Francis in honour of Saint Francis of Assisi.
He later revealed the inspiration for the name: ‘Next to me was the Archbishop Emeritus of São Paulo, also Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for the Clergy, Cardinal Claudio Hummes: an amazing friend, an amazing friend!
‘When it got somewhat dangerous, he comforted me. And when the votes went as much as two-thirds, the same old applause got here, since the Pope was elected.
‘He hugged me, kissed me, and said: “Don’t forget the poor!” And that word entered here: the poor, the poor. Then, immediately, in relation to the poor, I believed of Francis of Assisi.’
Standing on the balcony of St Peter’s Square on the night of his election, he told the 1000’s of faithful gathered below and the hundreds of thousands watching on live TV that the cardinals had gone to ‘the ends of the earth’ for a brand new pope.
‘The Francis Effect’ gained him an almost rockstar-like appeal within the early days along with his less formal approach to the papacy than his predecessors.
Asked to explain himself, Francis replied candidly: ‘I’m a sinner.’
He shunned the plush papal apartments within the Apostolic Palace for a room on the Casa Santa Marta guesthouse.
Francis also opted for odd black shoes to the red loafers made famous by Benedict and preferred the title Bishop of Rome to the more grandiose Supreme Pontiff or Vicar of Christ.
After his election, he famously returned to the Church-run residence where he was staying in the course of the run-up to the conclave to pay his bill.
Through his time as pope, he was also praised for his more forward-thinking stance on LGBTQ+ issues in comparison with his predecessors.
Francis made his most famous comment on that subject somewhat greater than 4 months after his election when, on a flight back from Rio de Janeiro, a journalist asked him about gay priests.
‘If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will,’ the pope asked, ‘who am I to evaluate?’
It was the primary time a pontiff had ever used the word ‘gay’ in reference to sexuality.
Pope Francis also described the criminalisation of homosexuality as an ‘injustice’ while travelling back to Rome from South Sudan capital, Juba, last 12 months.
Individuals with ‘homosexual tendencies’ are children of God and ought to be welcomed by the church, the Catholic leader said.
To mark ten years of Pope Francis heading up the Church, Dr Gregory Ryan from the Centre for Catholic Studies at Durham University previously spoke to Metro UK about his legacy.
He said: ‘Several of the voices who at the moment are vociferously exercising their right to criticise the pope are the identical individuals who, in a previous generation, were trying to emphasize that the role of Catholic clergy and Catholic bishops was to be in line and never to dissent from papal teaching.
‘That’s one in all the things that’s turned around.
‘There was criticism of Benedict and John Paul II, nevertheless it tended to return from theologians, academics and activists.
‘What’s unique here is that a few of it’s coming from the bishops as well.’
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