A day after he appeared in public, at St. Peter’s Square on Easter Sunday, 88-year-old Pope Francis died.
According to the Vatican, through the Vatican news service, Pope Francis died at his residence in the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta.
Cardinal Farrell announced in a statement: “Dearest brothers and sisters, with deep sorrow I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis.
“At 7:35 this morning (local time), the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and His Church.
“He taught us to live the values of the Gospel with fidelity, courage and universal love, especially in favour of the poorest and most marginalised.
“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.”
Before now, Pope Francis had been bedridden for months, illnesses said to be linked to flu largely.
At some point before he was discharged from the hospital about two weeks ago, he had told his aides that he would resign if the illness persisted.
After his death on Monday as reported by the Vatican news service, Cardinal Farrell said: “His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and His Church.”
The papacy of the first non-European Pope in centuries heralded many firsts and while he never stopped introducing reforms to the Catholic Church, he remained popular among traditionalists.
He was the first Pope from the Americas or the southern hemisphere.
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Not since Syrian-born Gregory III died in 741 had there been a non-European Bishop of Rome.
He was also the first Jesuit to be elected to the throne of St Peter – Jesuits were historically looked on with suspicion by Rome.
Francis’s predecessor, Benedict XVI, was the first Pope to retire voluntarily in almost 600 years and for almost a decade the Vatican Gardens hosted two popes.
As Cardinal Bergoglio of Argentina, he was already in his seventies when he became Pope in 2013.
Pope Francis was born as Jorge Mario Bergoglio on December 17, 1936 in Flores, a neighbourhood of Buenos Aires.
He was the eldest of five children from Mario José Bergoglio and Regina María Sívori. Mario Bergoglio was an Italian immigrant accountant.
Regina Sívori was a housewife born in Buenos Aires to a family of northern Italian origin.
Mario Bergoglio’s family left Italy in 1929 to escape the fascist rule of Benito Mussolini.
According to María Elena Bergoglio, the Pope’s only living sibling, the family did not emigrate for economic reasons.
His other siblings were Oscar Adrián, Marta Regina, and Alberto Horacio. His niece, Cristina Bergoglio, is a painter based in Madrid, Spain.
In the sixth grade, Bergoglio attended Wilfrid Barón de los Santos Ángeles, a school of the Salesians of Don Bosco in Ramos Mejía, Buenos Aires Province.
He then attended the technical secondary school Escuela Técnica Industrial Hipólito Yrigoyen and graduated with a chemical technician’s diploma.
In that capacity, he spent several years working in the food section of Hickethier-Bachmann Laboratory, where he worked under Esther Ballestrino.
Earlier, he had been a bouncer and a janitor.
When he was 21 years old, after life-threatening pneumonia and three cysts, Bergoglio had part of a lung excised.
While on his way to celebrate the Spring Day, Bergoglio passed by a church to go to confession and was inspired by a priest.
He then studied at the archdiocesan seminary, Inmaculada Concepción Seminary, in Villa Devoto, Buenos Aires, and, after three years, entered the Society of Jesus as a novice on 11 March 1958.
Bergoglio had said that, as a young seminarian, he had a crush on a girl and briefly doubted his religious career.
As a Jesuit novice, he studied the humanities in Santiago, Chile.
After his novitiate, Bergoglio officially became a Jesuit on 12 March 1960 when he made the religious profession of the initial, perpetual vows of poverty, chastity and obedience of a member of the order.
In 1960, Bergoglio obtained a licentiate in philosophy from the Colegio Máximo de San José.
He then taught literature and psychology at the Colegio de la Inmaculada Concepción, a high school in Santa Fe, from 1964 to 1965.
In 1966, he taught the same courses at the Colegio del Salvador in Buenos Aires.
In 1967, Bergoglio began his theological studies at Facultades de Filosofía y Teología de San Miguel.
On 13 December 1969, he was ordained by Archbishop Ramón José Castellano. He served as the master of novices for the province there and became a professor of theology.
Bergoglio completed his final stage of spiritual training as a Jesuit, tertianship, at Alcalá de Henares, Spain, and took final vows as a Jesuit, including the fourth vow of obedience to missioning by the pope, on 22 April 1973.
He was named provincial superior of the Society of Jesus in Argentina that July for a six-year term which ended in 1979.
In 1973, he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but his stay was shortened by the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War.
After the completion of his term of office, he was named, in 1980, the rector of the Philosophical and Theological Faculty of San Miguel where he had studied.
Before taking up this new appointment, he spent the first three months of 1980 in Ireland to learn English, staying at the Jesuit Centre at the Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy, Dublin.
He then served at San Miguel for six years until 1986 when, at the discretion of Jesuit superior-general Peter Hans Kolvenbach, he was replaced by someone more in tune with the worldwide trend in the Society of Jesus toward emphasizing social justice rather than his emphasis on popular religiosity and direct pastoral work.
Bergoglio then spent several months at the Sankt Georgen Graduate School of Philosophy and Theology in Frankfurt, Germany, and considered possible dissertation topics.
He settled on exploring the work of the German/Italian theologian Romano Guardini, particularly his study of “Contrast” published in his 1925 work Der Gegensatz.
He returned to Argentina earlier than expected to serve as a confessor and spiritual director to the Jesuit community in Córdoba.
As a student at the Salesian school, Bergoglio was mentored by Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest Stefan Czmil.
Bergoglio often rose hours before his classmates to serve Divine Liturgy for Czmil.
In 1992, Jesuit authorities asked Bergoglio not to live in Jesuit residences due to ongoing tensions with leaders and scholars; concerns about his “dissent”, views on Catholic orthodoxy, and opposition to liberation theology; and his role as auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires.
As a bishop, he was no longer subject to his Jesuit superior.
From then on, he no longer visited Jesuit houses and was in “virtual estrangement from the Jesuits” until after his election as pope.
Bergoglio was named Auxiliary Bishop of Buenos Aires in 1992 and was consecrated on 27 June 1992 as titular bishop of Auca, with Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, archbishop of Buenos Aires, serving as principal consecrator.
He chose his episcopal motto to be Miserando atque eligendo,[61] drawn from Saint Bede’s homily on Matthew 9:9–13: “because he saw him through the eyes of mercy and chose him”.
On 3 June 1997, Bergoglio was appointed coadjutor archbishop of Buenos Aires, after which he became metropolitan archbishop after Quarracino’s death on 28 February 1998.
As archbishop, he established new parishes, restructured the archdiocese, led pro-life efforts, and formed a commission on divorces.
One of Bergoglio’s major initiatives as archbishop was to increase the church’s presence in the shantytown (villa miseria, or just villa) slums of Buenos Aires. Under his leadership, the number of priests assigned to work in the shantytowns doubled, and he visited them himself.
This work led to him being referred to as the “villero bishop”, sometimes translated as the “slum bishop”.
Early in his tenure as archbishop, Bergoglio sold the archdiocese’s bank shares and moved its accounts to regular international banks.
This ended the church’s high spending habits, which had nearly led to bankruptcy, and enforced stricter fiscal discipline.
On 6 November 1998, while remaining archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio was named Ordinary for Eastern Catholics in Argentina, who lacked a prelate of their own church.
On Bergoglio’s election to the papacy, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk said that Bergoglio understood the liturgy, rites, and spirituality of Shevchuk’s Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and always “took care of our Church in Argentina” as Ordinary.
In 2000, Bergoglio was the only church official to reconcile with Jerónimo Podestá, a former bishop who had been suspended as a priest after opposing the Argentine Revolution military dictatorship in 1972.
He also defended Podestá’s wife from Vatican attacks on their marriage.
That same year, Bergoglio said the Argentine Catholic Church needed “to put on garments of public penance for the sins committed during the years of the dictatorship” in the 1970s, during the Dirty War.
Bergoglio regularly celebrated the Holy Thursday foot-washing ritual in jails, hospitals, retirement homes, and slums
Bergoglio continued to be the archbishop of Buenos Aires after his elevation to the cardinalate in 2001.
In 2007, shortly after Benedict XVI introduced new rules for pre-Vatican II liturgical forms, Bergoglio established a weekly Mass in this extraordinary form of the Roman Rite.
On 8 November 2005, Bergoglio was elected president of the Argentine Episcopal Conference for a three-year term (2005–2008), and re-elected on 11 November 2008.
He remained a member of that commission’s permanent governing body, the president of its committee for the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, and a member of its liturgy committee for the care of shrines.
While head of the Argentine Catholic bishops’ conference, Bergoglio issued a collective apology for his church’s failure to protect people from the junta during the Dirty War.
When he turned 75 in December 2011, Bergoglio submitted his resignation as archbishop of Buenos Aires to Pope Benedict XVI as required by canon law.
As he had no coadjutor archbishop, he stayed in office, waiting for the Vatican to appoint a replacement.
On 21 February 2001, Pope John Paul II made Archbishop Bergoglio a cardinal, assigning him the title of cardinal priest of San Roberto Bellarmino. Bergoglio was installed there on 14 October. During his trip to Rome for the ceremony, he and his sister María Elena visited their father’s hometown in northern Italy.
As cardinal, Bergoglio was appointed to five administrative positions in the Roman Curia. He was a member of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments; the Congregation for the Clergy; the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life; the Pontifical Council for the Family; and the Commission for Latin America. Later that year, when Cardinal Edward Egan returned to New York following the September 11 attacks, Bergoglio replaced him as relator (recording secretary) in the Synod of Bishops, and, according to the Catholic Herald, created “a favourable impression as a man open to communion and dialogue”.
Cardinal Bergoglio was known for his personal humility, doctrinal conservatism, and commitment to social justice.
His simple lifestyle, including living in a small apartment rather than the elegant bishop’s residence, using public transportation, and cooking his own meals, enhanced his reputation for humility.
He limited his time in Rome to “lightning visits”.
After Pope John Paul II died on 2 April 2005, Bergoglio attended his funeral and was considered one of the papabile for succession to the papacy.
He participated as a cardinal elector in the 2005 papal conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI. In the National Catholic Reporter, John L. Allen Jr. reported that Bergoglio was a frontrunner in the 2005 conclave.
In September 2005, the Italian magazine Limes published claims that Bergoglio had been the runner-up and main challenger to Cardinal Ratzinger at that conclave and that he had received 40 votes in the third ballot but fell back to 26 at the fourth and decisive ballot.
The claims were based on a diary purportedly belonging to an anonymous cardinal who had been present at the conclave.
According to the Italian journalist Andrea Tornielli, this number of votes had no precedent for a Latin American papabile.
La Stampa reported that Bergoglio was in close contention with Ratzinger during the election until he made an emotional plea that the cardinals should not vote for him.
According to Tornielli, Bergoglio made this request to prevent the conclave from delaying too much in the election of a pope.
As a cardinal, Bergoglio was associated with Communion and Liberation, a Catholic evangelical lay movement of the type known as associations of the faithful.
He sometimes made appearances at the annual gathering known as the Rimini Meeting held during the late summer months in Italy.
In 2005, Cardinal Bergoglio authorized the request for beatification—the third step toward sainthood—for six members of the Pallottine community murdered in the San Patricio Church massacre.
Bergoglio also ordered an investigation into the murders; 1984 testimony indicated that they were perpetrated by members of the Argentine Navy on the orders of Rear Admiral Rubén Chamorro.
Francis was the first Jesuit pope. This was a significant appointment because of the sometimes tense relations between the Society of Jesus and the Holy See.
He was also the first from the Americas, and the first from the Southern Hemisphere.
Many media reported him as being the first non-European pope, but he was the 11th; the previous was Gregory III from Syria who died in 741. Although Francis was not born in Europe, he was ethnically European; his father and maternal grandparents were from northern Italy.
As pope, Francis’s manner was less formal than that of his immediate predecessors, a style that news coverage has referred to as “no frills”, noting that it is “his common touch and accessibility that is proving the greatest inspiration”.
On the night of his election, he took a bus back to his hotel with the cardinals rather than being driven in the papal car.
The next day, he visited Cardinal Jorge María Mejía in the hospital and chatted with patients and staff.
In addition to his native Spanish, he spoke fluent Italian (the official language of Vatican City and the “everyday language” of the Holy See) and German. He was also conversant in Latin (the official language of the Holy See), French, Portuguese, and English; he also understood Piedmontese and some Genoese Ligurian.
Francis chose not to live in the official papal residence in the Apostolic Palace but instead remains in the Vatican guest house in a suite in which he can receive visitors and hold meetings. He was the first pope since Pope Pius X to live outside the papal apartments.
As a Jesuit pope, Francis made clear that a fundamental task of the faithful is not so much to follow rules but to discern what God is calling them to do. He altered the culture of the clergy, steering away from what he has named as “clericalism” (which dwells on priestly status and authority) and toward an ethic of service (Francis says the church’s shepherds must have the “smell of the sheep”, always staying close to the People of God).
Bergoglio was elected pope on 13 March 2013, the second day of the 2013 papal conclave, after which he took the papal name Francis.
Francis was elected on the fifth ballot.
The Habemus papam announcement was delivered by the cardinal protodeacon, Jean-Louis Tauran.
Cardinal Christoph Schönborn later said that Bergoglio was elected following two supernatural signs, one in the conclave—and hence confidential—and one from a Latin-American couple, friends of Schönborn at Vatican City, who whispered Bergoglio’s name in the elector’s ear; Schönborn commented “if these people say Bergoglio, that’s an indication of the Holy Spirit”.
Instead of accepting his cardinals’ congratulations while seated on the papal throne, Francis received them standing, reportedly an immediate sign of a changing approach to formalities at the Vatican.
During his first appearance as pontiff on the balcony of Saint Peter’s Basilica, he wore a white cassock, not the red, ermine-trimmed mozzetta used by previous popes.
He also wore the same iron pectoral cross that he had worn as archbishop of Buenos Aires, rather than the gold one worn by his predecessors.
After being elected and choosing his name, his first act was bestowing the Urbi et Orbi blessing on thousands of pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square. Before blessing the crowd, he asked those in St. Peter’s Square to pray for his predecessor, “the bishop emeritus of Rome” Pope Benedict XVI, and for himself as the new “bishop of Rome”.
Francis held his papal inauguration on 19 March 2013 in St. Peter’s Square. He celebrated Mass in the presence of political and religious leaders from around the world.
In his homily, Francis focused on the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, the liturgical day on which the Mass was celebrated
At his first audience on 16 March 2013, Francis told journalists that he had chosen the name in honour of Saint Francis of Assisi and had done so because he was especially concerned for the well-being of the poor.
He explained that, as it was becoming clear during the conclave voting that he would be elected, the Brazilian Cardinal Cláudio Hummes had embraced him and whispered, “Don’t forget the poor”, which made Bergoglio think of the saint.
Bergoglio had previously expressed his admiration for St. Francis, explaining that: “He brought to Christianity an idea of poverty against the luxury, pride, vanity of the civil and ecclesiastical powers of the time. He changed history.”
This is the first time that a pope has been named “Francis”. On the day of his election, the Vatican clarified that his official papal name was “Francis” and not “Francis I”, i.e. no regnal number is used for him. His name would become Francis I if and when there is a Francis II.
It is the first time since Lando’s 913–914 pontificate that a serving pope holds a name not used by a predecessor.
Francis also said that some cardinal electors had jokingly suggested to him that he should choose either “Adrian”, since Adrian VI had been a reformer of the church, or “Clement”, to settle the score with Clement XIV who had suppressed the Jesuit order.
Bergoglio, had he been elected in 2005, would have chosen the pontifical name of “John XXIV” in honour of John XXIII. He told Cardinal Francesco Marchisano: “John, I would have called myself John, like the Good Pope; I would have been completely inspired by him.”
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