Pope Francis died of a stroke and subsequent heart failure, the Vatican said in a press release, revealing that the pontiff had asked to be buried in a simple and unadorned tomb.
The 88 -year -old pope, venerated by millions of Catholics around the world, died on Monday at 7:35 am in his apartment in Casa Santa Marta. His cause of death was confirmed by an ECG test, said the Vatican.
Francis, who died twice when hospitalized with severe pneumonia in February, also suffered from multiple bronchi, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes.
The Pope confirmed in his will that he wanted to be buried in the Santa Maria Maggiore church in the Esquilino district of Rome, breaking with the longtime Vatican tradition. He would pray to the basilica before and after trips abroad, and went for the last time on April 12.
The text of his will specified that Francis wanted to be buried “in the ground, without any particular decoration” but with the inscription of his papal name in Latin: Franciscus.
The popes are generally buried with a lot of fanfare in the caves under the Basilica Saint -Pierre in the city of the Vatican, but Francis – loved by many Catholics for its humility – simplified rites for papal funerals last year.
In the text of his will published by the Vatican, the late Pope said: “The cost of preparing the burial will be covered by a sum provided by a benefactor, which I arranged to be transferred to the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major. I gave the instructions necessary for this subject to Cardinal Rolandas Makrickas, extraordinary commissioner of the Liberian basilica. ”.
His body was transferred to a coffin in the chapel of Casa Santa Marta on Monday evening. The coffin will be taken to the Saint-Pierre basilica on Wednesday morning to allow the public to pay tribute.
The cardinals will meet Tuesday morning to decide on the date of the Pope’s funeral, which is to take place between four and six days after death. The funeral will be followed by nine days of official mourning.
Thousands of pilgrims and tourists flocked to St Peter Square, where prayers for the Pope took place on Monday evening.
Francis, who had a chronic pulmonary disease and was part of a lung removed as a young man, was admitted to the Gemelli Hospital in Rome on February 14 for a respiratory crisis which turned into double pneumonia. He spent 38 days there, the longest hospitalization of his 12 -year papacy.
He was sent from the hospital on March 23 and made his last public appearance on Sunday, when he made a tour of Place Saint-Pierre in the Popemobile and gave a brief salvation of the central balcony of the Saint-Pierre basilica.
In the middle of intense mourning in the coming days and weeks, maneuvering within the Vatican for whom succeeding Francis and becoming the 268th chief of the Catholic Church is certain to start. Cardinals around the world will go to Rome for a conclave, the secret and complex electoral ritual held in the Sistine Chapel involving around 138 cardinals which are eligible to vote.
The conclave must start its deliberations within 20 days of the death of the Pope.
Some of the potentially advanced potential contenders before Francis’ death were Matteo Zuppi, a progressive Italian cardinal, Pietro Parolin, who is the Secretary of State of the Vatican, and Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, of the Philippines.
King Charles said that he and the Queen – who met the Pope in Rome last week – had “heavy hearts” to the news of his death, adding that Francis would be recalled for his compassion and tireless commitment.
President Trump said he would attend Francis’s funeral, publishing on social networks: “Rest in peace Pope Francis! May God bless him as well as all those who loved him!” Former President Joe Biden said that Francis would be “in memories as one of the most consecutive leaders of our time”, and Barack Obama said he was “a rare leader who made us want to be better people”.
In Italy, Giorgia Meloni, the Prime Minister, said: “I had the privilege of taking advantage of his friendship, his advice and his teachings, which have never failed even in moments of trial and suffering.”
The death of the pontiff is likely to exacerbate the net divisions within the Curia, the conservatives seeking to tear the church control from the reformers.
During its 12 -year papacy, Francis – the first Jesuit pope – was a vocal champion of the poor, dispossessed and disadvantaged in the world, and a frank critic of the greed of companies and social and economic inequalities. Within the Vatican, he criticized extravagance and privilege, calling for church leaders to be humility.
His points of view agitated a large number of cardinals and powerful responsible for the Vatican, who often sought to frustrate Francis’ efforts to revise the old institutions of the Church. But his compassion and humanity attracted him to millions around the world.
Francis, who was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1936, and was elected Pope in March 2013. He immediately pointed out his style of papacy by taking the bus, rather than by the papal car, at his hotel, where he paid his bill before moving to the Vatican house, revolutionizing the opulent papal apartments. During his first appearance with the media, he expressed his wish for a “poor church and a church for the poor”.
He concentrated the papal attention to poverty and inequalities, calling without hindrance capitalism as the “durable duil”. Two years after its papacy, he published an 180 -page encyclical on the environment, demanding that the richest nations in the world pay their “serious social debt” to the poor. The climate crisis represented “one of the main challenges that humanity faced in our time,” said the Pope.
He called for compassion and generosity towards refugees, claiming that they should not be treated as “pawns on the chessboard of humanity”. After visiting the Greek island of Lesbos, he offered 12 Syrian shelters to the Vatican. During his recent period in the hospital, he continued his phone calls to the Holy Family Church in Gaza, a night routine since October 9, 2023.
One of the biggest problems with which Francis had to face was that of the sexual office abuse and the concealment of crimes by the church committed by the priests and the bishops. During the first years of its papacy, while the wave of scandals engulfed the church, Francis was accused by survivors and others of not understanding the extent of the crisis and the urgent need to proactively fold the abuse and its concealment.
In 2019, Francis summoned bishops around the world to Rome to discuss the crisis and then published an edict forcing priests and nuns to report sexual abuse and its concealment to the Church authorities, and guarantee the protection of the denunciators. It was an important decision towards the Church which assumed the responsibility of the scandals and went much further than its predecessors.
During his mandate as head of the Catholic Church, Francis was forced to respond to repeated acts of terrorism and persecution. He had trouble emphasizing that violence had no role in playing in the true practice of religion, and that people should not confuse acts of terrorism with Islam. “I think it is not fair to identify Islam with violence,” he said after the murder of a Catholic priest in France in 2016. “I think that in almost all religions, there is always a small fundamentalist group,” he said, adding: “We (Catholics) have it.”
Francis compared himself with compassion on questions of sexuality (answer “Who am I to judge?” To a question on gay priests), the family and the role of women in society – while adhering to traditional Catholic doctrine on marriage, contraception and abortion. Although many on the left have tried to claim Francis as one of their own, he could not easily be defined as liberal or conservative.
During his many trips abroad, Francis was welcomed like a rock star, with hundreds of thousands – sometimes millions – while waiting for hours for a glimpse of the little figure in a white dress in her open friend. His attraction was particularly strong among young people, which he often urged to reject materialism and over-dependence on technology. “Happiness… is not an application that you can download on your phones,” Francis told Catholic Youth in April 2016.
