Pope Francis Dies at 88 on Easter Monday of the Jubilee Year

| Mon, 04/21/2025 - 07:00

Pope Francis in Vatican City on April 13, 2025 / Photo: Marco Iacobucci via Shutterstock

Pope Francis died this morning aged 88 at the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican confirmed in a .

In his final years, Francis had struggled frequently with respiratory problems and in the opening months of the Jubilee year had been hospitalized at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital for five weeks.

Tributes and remembrances are pouring in from around the world, highlighting a few key themes of Francis’ progressive 12-year papacy.

An unprecedented “people’s pope”

Breaks in precedent to make the Catholic church more inclusive and the liturgy more accessible were at the heart of Francis’ tenure, which began after his traditionalist-minded predecessor Pope Benedict XVI unexpectedly stepped down in February 2013.

On the global stage, Francis — born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires in 1936 — advocated for the dignity of the poor and migrants, and frequently who advanced anti-immigration rhetoric and policy. In one from 2018 titled “Rejoice and Be Glad,” he professed that showing hospitality to the stranger was “not a notion invented by some pope, or a temporary fad,” but a bedrock principle of Christianity.

Inside the church, Francis broached hot-button issues like the role of women, the dignity of LGBTQ people and the clerical sex abuse crisis. In the same pivotal “Rejoice and be Glad” exhortation, Francis called for defense of the unborn, and in April 2024 appeared to reiterate the church’s stance against abortion and gender fluidity with the “Dignitas Infinita” () declaration authored by the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith, the department of the Roman Curia concerned with religious discipline. This was one example of how the on-paper grip of church doctrine and the in-person realities of Francis’ approach often diverged: the pontiff refused to bow to pressures to deny communion to leaders who advocated for abortion rights, allowed blessings of same-sex couples, and expressed that transgender people could become godparents and have their children baptized.

On these and other controversial social issues within the church, Francis’ less dogmatic approach often centered the dignity and worth of the person before him, but stopped short of enacting radical change to entrenched policy. Yet efforts to decentralize the authority of Rome were at the core of Francis’ vision, and he was able to push forth some major reforms to Vatican law, including allowing local bishops to translate giving it a more contemporary slant.

Francis also developed a reputation for good humor and self-effacement — often to the chagrin of his more traditionalist colleagues. He categorically rejected some of the more antiquated and formal trappings of his role, refusing to bunk at the Apostolic Palace or wear extravagant garments, opting for simple robes in the manner of his namesake saint, Francis of Assisi, who famously renounced his worldly riches and inheritance to embrace a life of discipleship.

When Cardinal Bergoglio first announced that he would take up the name Francis in 2013, Thomas Rosica, then the deputy spokesman for the Vatican, to the “special place in his heart and his ministry for the poor, for the disenfranchised, for those living on the fringes and facing injustice.”