Pope Francis dead at 88

Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, has died aged 88, the Vatican announced on Easter Monday.

“Dearest brothers and sisters, with deep sorrow I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis. At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father,” Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Camerlengo of the Apostolic Chamber, said in a statement.

The pontiff had been diminished by a series of health issues in recent years and was using a wheelchair for some of his recent public appearances. In February 2025, he was hospitalized with severe bronchitis and pneumonia in both lungs.

The cause of his death was a cerebral stroke leading to a coma and irreversible heart failure, the Vatican said.

It was one in a long line of health problems for the pope, who had part of a lung removed as a young man and has become increasingly frail over the years. He underwent two major intestinal surgeries in recent years: in 2021, to remove the left part of his colon; and again to treat an intestinal blockage in June 2023.

For the latter procedure, Francis spent nine days in a Rome hospital and was filmed saying “I’m alive” while being escorted out of the hospital in a wheelchair, surrounded by reporters.

Francis, who was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina, was the first Jesuit pope and the first native of Latin America.

His liberal views marked a noticeable break from more conservative predecessors and at times sparked pushback from Vatican hard-liners.

But his legacy is also one of complexities, compromises and contradictions, reflecting his often-difficult position as a progressive reformer in a conservative global institution.

Francis was unafraid to wade into politics, publicly feuding with United States President Donald Trump over immigration and rebuking U.S. Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, over apparently instrumentalizing a theological point for migration policy.

Indeed, it seems the pontiff’s last diplomatic function was a lightning visit by Vance, whose motorcade remained in the Vatican for 17 minutes on Easter Sunday, according to media reports.

As a social reformer, Francis will be remembered for taking a gentler view of homosexuality. He insisted being gay is “not a crime” and approved blessings for same-sex couples, while apologizing in 2024 for using a slur to refer to gay men. But he also reiterated that homosexuality is a sin in the eyes of the Church.

On gender, the pontiff hewed closer to tradition in repeatedly ruling out ordaining female priests or deacons — though he named numerous women to roles in the Vatican, including appointing the first woman to head a major department.

He said women who had undergone an abortion should be “forgiven” — yet called a Belgian abortion law “homicidal” and initiated beatification for Belgian King Baudouin, who abdicated his throne for a day rather than sign the law that decriminalized abortion in 1990.

Fittingly for the first non-European pope in 1,300 years since the Syrian Gregory III, Pope Francis crisscrossed the globe ministering to followers along the edges of the Catholic world — from Asia and the Middle East, to the Arctic and the Peruvian Amazon — though his travel plans were often disrupted by bouts of illness.

Sermons during his travels often drew upon themes of environmentalism, for which he was a champion. He took his name from St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals and ecology, and his encyclical or papal doctrine called on people to take action for the environment. In 2015, he said: “Clearly, the Bible has no place for a tyrannical anthropocentrism unconcerned for other creatures.”

Pope Francis was a fierce critic of war. He condemned Russia’s “repugnant” invasion of Ukraine and called for Ukraine to “have the courage to raise the white flag.” Although this latter comment, along with his urging of Russian youths to remember their “legacy” as heirs of a “great, enlightened Russian empire,” drew Ukrainians’ ire and forced the Vatican to walk back.

As recently as January 2025, he called the situation in the Gaza Strip “very serious and shameful,” saying in remarks delivered by an aide: “We cannot in any way accept the bombing of civilians.” He was previously criticized by an Israeli minister for calling for an investigation into whether the country’s military campaign in Gaza constituted genocide.

The pope’s recurring health problems had previously fueled speculation that he might resign. Francis himself took over in 2013 as head of the Catholic Church after his predecessor, Benedict XVI, became the first pontiff to resign since 1415.

In December 2022, the pontiff acknowledged he had signed a resignation letter to be used if he ever became medically impaired. But in February 2023, he stressed that pontiffs were nominated “for life” and that resignations should not become the norm.

Speaking to Rai 1 TV, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said she would miss “a pope with whom you could talk about everything … a person who made you feel good, feel at ease. You could speak to him in a simple way, as if he were a parish priest.”

Francis will be buried, according to his wishes, in a simple underground tomb in St. Mary Major Basilica.

This article has been updated. Hannah Roberts contributed reporting from Rome.