88-year-old pontiff to be laid to rest outside Vatican

Pope Francis, an energetic reformer who inspired widespread devotion from Catholics but riled traditionalists, died on Monday aged 88.

Dubbed “the people’s Pope,” the Argentine pontiff will go down in history as a radical pontiff and a champion of underdogs who forged a more compassionate Catholic Church while stopping short of overhauling centuries-old dogma.

The first pope from the Americas and the southern hemisphere, Francis staunchly defended the most disadvantaged, from migrants to communities battered by climate change, which he warned was a crisis caused by humankind.

The leader of the Catholic Church since March 2013, he spent 38 days being treated for double pneumonia at Rome’s Gemelli hospital before seeming to recover, leaving the facility on March 23.

His death came just a day after he delighted the crowds of worshippers at the Vatican on Easter Sunday with an appearance, looking frail, on the balcony at Saint Peter’s Basilica.

“Dearest brothers and sisters, it is with deep sorrow that I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis,” said Cardinal Kevin Farrell in the statement published by the Vatican on its Telegram channel.

“This morning at 7:35 am (0535 GMT) the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the home of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and His church,” said the statement.

Pope Francis’ body will be laid in a coffin in the chapel at the Saint Martha residence where he lived at 18:00 GMT (2 a.m. Tuesday, Manila time), the Vatican said.

“His Eminence the Most Reverend Cardinal Kevin Joseph Farrell, Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church, will preside over the rite of certification of death and the laying of the body in the coffin,” the Holy See said in a statement.

His death sets in motion centuries-old traditions that will culminate in the gathering of a conclave of cardinals to choose a successor.

In the meantime, the day-to-day running of the tiny Vatican City state will be handled by the camerlengo, currently Dublin-born Farrell.

At the Vatican on Monday, a hush seemed to descend on the normally boisterous Saint Peter’s Square as the sound of bells rang out.

“He lived this Easter and then he went,” Cesarina Cireddu from Sardinia said with tears in her eyes. “He’s actually returned to the Lord — and god speed.”

Tour groups continued to walk through the sprawling plaza as quiet groups of people leaned against a barricade to pray.

Venezuelan Riccardo Vielma, 31, who is studying to be a priest, said “we have lost our spiritual father.”

“This is the moment for all of humanity to unite and pray for him.”

Humble pastor

Francis, whose real name was Jorge Bergoglio, was the first Jesuit to lead the world’s almost 1.4 billion Catholics and the first from the Americas.

He took over after Benedict XVI became the first pontiff since the Middle Ages to step down — and cut a sharply different figure from the German theologian.

A football-loving former archbishop of Buenos Aires who was often happiest among his flock, Francis sought to forge a more open and compassionate Church.

Francis’ pontificate was also marked by pushing through governance reforms and tackling the scourge of clerical sex abuse of children.

But critics accused him of creating doctrinal confusion and failing to defend traditional Catholic beliefs on key issues such as abortion and divorce.

Francis’ desire to chart a different path was evident right to the end, with his decision to be buried not in St Peter’s Basilica but in Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore basilica.

He will become the first pope in more than 100 years to be laid to rest outside the Vatican.

Francis also rejected the tradition of popes having three coffins, instead choosing to be buried in just one, made of wood and zinc, to reflect his role as a humble pastor.

Health issues

Francis had maintained a busy schedule, right up to hosting the prime minister of Slovakia shortly before his hospital admission.

The pope, who had part of his lung removed as a young man, was visibly breathless in the days before going to the Gemelli, delegating aides to read his homilies at public audiences.

Even after he was released from hospital and ordered to rest for two months, Francis did not wait long before making public appearances.

He had been admitted to hospital with a respiratory infection in March 2023. That same year he also underwent surgery for a hernia, and in 2021 he had colon surgery.

He suffered knee pain that required him to use a wheelchair, and had fallen twice in recent months.

Yet he never took a day off and made frequent trips abroad, including a four-nation Asia-Pacific tour only last September.

Huge crowds gathered wherever he went, a testament to his popularity and human touch, which saw him finish his Sunday Angelus prayer each week urging followers to pray for him and to have a good lunch.

Love over doctrine

When Francis took over, the Catholic Church was mired in infighting and beset by a global scandal over clerical sex abuse of children and decades of cover-ups.

He promised an end to impunity and changed Vatican law to help tackle abuse, though victims said he could have gone further.

More widely, he initiated a major shake-up of the Vatican’s powerful governing body, including improving financial responsibility and allowing lay Catholics to lead Vatican offices.

Throughout his papacy, Francis championed the poor and vulnerable and emphasized love over doctrine.

“If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?” he said at the start of his papacy.

However, his detractors accused him of failing to uphold established Church doctrine, and his final months were marked by increasingly outspoken attacks by senior cardinals.

Tensions with conservative Catholics marked the Synod congress that met at the Vatican at the end of 2023, part of a years-long global consultation on the future of the Church — that Francis now leaves unfinished.

Kissed prisoners’ feet

Before his first Easter at the Vatican, he washed and kissed the feet of prisoners at a Rome prison.

It was the first in a series of powerful symbolic gestures that helped him achieve enthusiastic global admiration that eluded his predecessor.

For his first trip abroad, Francis chose the Italian island of Lampedusa, the point of entry for tens of thousands of migrants hoping to reach Europe, and slammed the “globalization of indifference”.

He also condemned plans by US President Donald Trump during his first term to build a border wall against Mexico as un-Christian.

After Trump’s re-election, Francis denounced his planned migrant deportations as a “major crisis” that “will end badly.”

In 2016, with Europe’s migration crisis at a peak, Francis flew to the Greek island of Lesbos and returned to Rome with three families of asylum-seeking Syrian Muslims.

He was also committed to inter-faith reconciliation, kissing the Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow in a historic February 2016 encounter, and making a joint call for freedom of belief with leading Sunni cleric Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb in 2019.

Francis re-energized Vatican diplomacy in other ways, helping facilitate a historic rapprochement between the United States and Cuba, and encouraging the peace process in Colombia.

And he sought to improve ties with China through a historic — but criticized — 2018 accord on the naming of bishops.

‘Raised on pasta’

Francis was born into an Italian emigrant family in Flores, a middle-class district of Buenos Aires, on December 17, 1936.

The eldest of five children, he was “born an Argentine but raised on pasta,” wrote biographer Paul Vallely.

From 13, he worked afternoons in a hosiery factory while studying to become a chemical technician in the mornings. Later he had a brief stint as a nightclub bouncer.

He was said to have liked dancing and girls, even coming close to proposing to one before, at age 17, he found a religious vocation.

Francis later recounted a period of turmoil during his Jesuit training, when he became besotted with a woman he met at a family wedding.

He was ordained a priest in 1969 and appointed the provincial, or leader, of the Jesuits in Argentina just four years later.

His time at the helm of the order, which spanned the country’s years of military dictatorship, was difficult.

Then, in his 50s, Francis is seen by most biographers as having undergone a midlife crisis.

He emerged to embark on a new career in the mainstream of the Catholic hierarchy, reinventing himself first as the “Bishop of the Slums” in Buenos Aires and later as the pope who would break the mold.

Photos from Edd Castro, Revoli Cortez and Ver Noveno