Pope Francis Dies at 88 After Suffering Stroke, Heart Failure

The Pontiff leaves behind a legacy of attempted reform that was not without controversy.

Pope Francis arrives for a visit to Saint Theresa's Home, a Catholic nursing home, in Singapore on September 13, 2024. Tiziana Fabi/AFP

Pope Francis, the first leader of the Roman Catholic Church to come from Latin America, and the first to come from the Western Hemisphere, has died.

Pope Francis I—born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and formerly the cardinal archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina—passed away on April 21 at 7:35 a.m. after suffering a stroke, falling into a coma, and suffering irreversible heart failure. He was 88 years old.

Hours before he died, the pope emerged on Easter Sunday to bless the thousands of people in St Peter’s Square in the Vatican, an independent enclave in the center of Rome.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the Vatican camerlengo, said, “At 7.35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the home of the Father.”

Farrell’s duties include announcing the pope’s death, overseeing funeral and burial preparations, and organizing the conclave to elect the new Pope.

The pope, who had part of one of his lungs removed as a young man, experienced a respiratory crisis in February that developed into double pneumonia.

He spent 38 days in the hospital before being released, but he remained frail.

He leaves behind a global church 1.3 billion strong, and a legacy that focused on social and political reforms in and out of that church.

However, those reforms—particularly those concerning a more progressive approach to the environment, illegal immigrants, and the LGBT community—were no stranger to controversy and conservative backlash.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni told RAI’s TG1 program that the whole world will remember Francis for being the pope of the people.

“I will miss him too, we had an extraordinary personal relationship, he was a pontiff with whom you could talk about everything, he was very special,” Meloni said. ”This news saddens us deeply, because a great man and a great shepherd has left us.”

Before He Was Pope

Francis, then Bergoglio, was ordained a priest on Dec. 13, 1969, and dedicated more than 50 years to religious life. He was ordained auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires in 1992 and later installed as the Archbishop on Feb. 28, 1998. He was elevated to Cardinal in 2001, and participated in the conclave to elect Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.

But the road of his priestly vocation began on Sept. 21, 1953, when the sudden urge to go to confession on his way to a party ignited within the then-17-year-old Bergoglio the desire to become a priest.

“After confession, I felt that something had changed,” he recalled in 2013. “I was not the same. I had heard just like a voice, a call: I was convinced that I had to become a priest. This experience in faith is important. We say that we must seek God, go to Him to ask forgiveness, but when we go, He is waiting for us.”

He entered the Jesuit Novitiate, the order’s extensive education and training program, on March 11, 1958, after battling a severe case of pneumonia the year before, and losing part of his right lung in the process.

He professed his perpetual vows as a Jesuit in 1973 and served as the superior of the Jesuit Province of Argentina and Uruguay from that year through 1979.

During that time, he faced the abduction of two Jesuit priests, Fathers Ferenc Jalics and Orlando Yorio, by the military junta during Argentina’s “Dirty War.”

“In the neighborhood where he worked, there was a guerrilla cell. But the two Jesuits had nothing to do with them: They were pastors, not politicians,” the pope told a meeting of Hungarian Jesuits in Budapest in 2023. “They were innocent when taken prisoner. The military found nothing to charge them with but they had to spend nine months in prison, suffering threats and torture. Then, they were released but these things leave deep wounds.”

Bergoglio then served as the rector and theology professor at Argentina’s Colegio Maximo until 1985, then traveling to Germany to finish his doctoral thesis.

He took inspiration for his religious life from the story of Saint Matthew, the tax collector and public sinner that Jesus called to become an Apostle.

Bergoglio Becomes Francis

His papacy began on March 13, 2013, and featured several firsts beyond his namesake. He was the first pope belonging to the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), the first pope to come from the Western Hemisphere, the first pope to address the G7 Summit, and he was the first pope to dedicate an encyclical, a papal teaching document, entirely to faith and climate change.

His first Easter, he changed a Holy Thursday ritual where the pontiff washes and kisses the feet of 12 clergymen in remembrance of Jesus’s washing the feet of the 12 Apostles to washing and kissing the feet of 12 prisoners, including some Muslims.

The following year, he presided over the marriage of several couples who had been living together and had children out of wedlock.

During his tenure, he canonized nearly 1,000 Saints, 813 of which were canonized together as the Martyrs of Otranto.

Francis was also very active politically, addressing the European Union, World Economic Forum, G7, and G20 summits on matters ranging from immigration and environmentalism to artificial intelligence, hosting his own climate summit, and recently pushing his city-state into diplomatic matters between the United States and Cuba.

Disputes

Francis’s time as pontiff was not free of controversy and was outright born of it. He assumed the position after his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, decided to step down in 2013. This was only the third time in the Catholic Church’s history, and the first time in more than 600 years, that a pope stepped down rather than held his position until death.

Some of his teachings—specifically recent letters instructing on the blessing of homosexual couples, his stance against the U.S.’s crackdowns on illegal immigration, and his criticisms of capitalism—sparked dissent among conservative Christians, particularly in the United States, with some describing him as a Marxist.

Francis also entered into agreements with China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party that gave it a say in who he appointed to serve as Bishops in China, a stark contrast to the reign of Pope Saint John Paul II, during which the Catholic Church, especially in Europe, was seen as a weapon against atheistic communist regimes.

At the same time, Francis ordered investigations into some of the more conservative U.S. Bishops who spoke in opposition to him, removing Bishop Joseph Strickland from his post as head of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, in 2023. The Vatican did not give a reason for Stickland’s departure.

On top of that, his supposed emphasis on dialogue restricted the use of the Traditional Latin Mass and antagonized the “backwardness” of the growing conservative traditional movement among the young faithful.

However, he has come out in defense of several of the Church’s beliefs and traditions, making clear that some things will never change, such as the necessity of the Sacraments, the openness of Holy Matrimony only between a man and a woman, an exclusively-male priesthood, and the necessity of Catholics to be pro-life.

What Comes Next

In the coming days, Farrell will call the more than 100 Cardinals from around the world to gather in the Vatican Palace to elect the new pope.

Completely secluded from the outside world, they will pray, discuss, and vote in a secret ballot. This election requires a two-thirds majority vote and can take several days, with up to four votes happening in a single day. Ballots are burned after each vote sending a smoke signal to the outside world: black smoke means no majority, white smoke means majority has been reached.

The electee is then asked if he wishes to take the position. Once he accepts and chooses his papal name, the cardinal deacon will appear before the tens of thousands gathered in the square and declare: “Habemus papam” (“We have a pope”).

This will be the third time that Catholic Church leaders have come together in this century, starting with the election of Pope Benedict XVI, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in 2005, after the passing of Pope Saint John Paul II. The College of Cardinals convened a second time, in 2013, to elect Pope Francis after Benedict abdicated, citing health concerns.

No American cardinal has ever been elected pope.

Chris Summers contributed to this report.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled triune in a quote by Cardinal Kevin Farrell. The Epoch Times regrets the error.