The world has gathered in mourning after the passing of Pope Francis.
On his last day - Easter, the holiest on the Christian calendar - Pope Francis doubled down on the defining theme of his papacy: mercy.
After a private audience with United States Vice-President JD Vance, who represented an Administration Francis had taken to task for its migrant crackdown and aid cuts, the Pope’s final speech was read aloud in St Peter’s Square as the Pontiff, in his wheelchair, struggled for breath.
“How much contempt is stirred up at times towards the vulnerable, the marginalised, and migrants,” the text said, the words read by a surrogate, given Francis’ fragile health.
“I appeal to all those in positions of political responsibility in our world not to yield to the logic of fear,” a later passage read, without mentioning names or nations.
Francis’ death ends a historic chapter for the world’s largest Christian faith, silencing a champion of the marginalised at a time when nationalism, a concept long held in contempt by the first Latin American pope, is once again surging in the West.
The church now finds itself at a crossroads, plagued by divisions and competing visions after the death of a spiritual leader who called out religious hypocrisy as he sought to throw open the faith’s doors, as he put it, to “everyone, everyone, everyone”.
“He still was a voice - a moral voice, moral in the sense that he stood up for peace and justice and the dignity of people,” said Brigitte Thalhammer, an Austrian nun who was standing next to a fountain in St Peter’s Square on Monday afternoon. “And I wondered: Who can be that voice now?”
Pope Francis during the Easter Mass in St Peter's Square on Saturday NZT in Vatican City, Vatican. Photo / Getty Images, Vatican Media via Vatican Pool
“My hope and prayer is that the church will be really different than what’s going on with the world leaders, where the bullies are on the top,” she said.
“This is my prayer, that in the conclave they will find someone who can continue this way.”
During his 12-year pontificate, Francis shifted the focus of the church away from debates about bedroom topics, such as divorce, homosexuality, and contraception.
He engaged more with modern issues, including climate change, immigration, and artificial intelligence.
The conclave - or the secretive assembly to pick the next pope - is likely to be held within 20 days. Packed with 135 voting cardinals from distant corners of the global church including Tonga, Myanmar, and Iran, it is poised to be the largest in the history of the church, as well as among the most unpredictable.
Several top Vatican bureaucrats, as well as notable cardinals in Europe, Asia, and Africa, are seen as contenders. But Francis has no true heir apparent, and the likelihood of a surprise, or a deadlock that could see the event go on for multiple days, is viewed as relatively high.
“More than other times, the new pope will be found within the conclave, and not before it,” said Marco Politi, author of The Unfinished,” about the legacy of Francis’ papacy.
“The church is also coming out of more than 10 years of civil war, with the ultraconservatives against the Pope. The difference with other times is that you really don’t have leading candidates.”
Francis’s death at 7.35am on Monday local time, in his rooms at Casa Santa Marta, was as much of a shock as it was foretold.
He had almost died twice during a 38-day hospitalisation for double pneumonia, but a certain wilful optimism had descended upon his supporters after his March 23 release.
The Pope was ordered to rest and avoid crowds, yet, as he had always suggested he would, he pressed on, eschewing retirement and rejecting the notion of a cloistered pope sequestered from his flock.
In the death certificate, Andrea Arcangeli, the Vatican’s director of health and hygiene, attributed the cause to a cerebral stroke and irreversible cardiocirculatory collapse, noting that it followed Francis’ acute respiratory failure from bilateral pneumonia, multiple episodes of bronchiectasis, arterial hypertension and Type 2 diabetes.
His last public appearance was with thousands of faithful in St Peter’s Square at Easter - including a poignant moment when he blessed an infant.
Vatican officials and other servants of the faith, some of them moved to tears, appeared stunned by the news.
Pope Francis greets faithful at the end of Palm Sunday Mass at St Peter's Square at the Vatican in Vatican City, Vatican. Photo / Getty Images, Vatican Media via Vatican Pool
“When I heard, I had to hold on to the arm of” another religious sister, said Reni Meak, a nun from Indonesia in St Peter’s Square , as bells marked the Pontiff’s death.
On the city bus they took to the Vatican, tourists were asking them who might be the next pope. They said the question was premature and declined to guess.
A carefully choreographed ritual began unfolding at the Vatican on Monday, nearly two hours after the Pope’s death, when it was announced by Cardinal Kevin Joseph Farrell, the Irish-born American prelate who serves as the Holy See’s camerlengo, the person who will administratively run the Vatican until the election of a new pope.
“Dearest brothers and sisters, with deep sorrow I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis,” Farrell said.
“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.”
Later, Farrell presided over the rite of certification of the Pope’s death and the placing of the body in the coffin, which, as ordered by Francis, will be simpler than those used to entomb past popes.
The rite, at the chapel of the Santa Marta House, was also set to be attended by the dean of the College of Cardinals, Francis’ relatives and Vatican health officials.
Vatican officials also today ceremonially sealed in red ribbon and wax the official papal apartment, where Francis normally delivered his Sunday Angelus prayers from the balcony. Francis’ rooms at Casa Santa Marta were also sealed.
The Roman curia - or Vatican City bureaucracy - will view the body at the chapel. Later, it will be moved to St Peter’s Basilica for public viewing ahead of the papal funeral, which is likely to be held on Friday, Saturday or Sunday local time and is also expected to be somewhat slimmed down, per Francis’ direction.
In Francis’ will, drafted in 2022 and published by the Vatican on Monday, he reiterated what he had publicly said: that he wished to be entombed at Rome’s Basilica of St Mary Major - which will make him the first pontiff in more than century not to be buried inside the Vatican walls.
US President Donald Trump said on social media that he and the first lady would attend the funeral.
“The tomb must be in the earth; simple, without particular decoration and with the only inscription: Franciscus,” Francis wrote in his will.
Tonight NZT, a congregation of cardinals, to be run by Farrell, will meet and decide on the precise timing of the transfer of the body to St Peter’s.
During his 12-year papacy, the first Jesuit pope put pastoral outreach above the role of doctrinal enforcer, washing the feet of prisoners and reaching out to divorced and remarried Catholics and the LGBTQ+ community.
In the process, he faced a level of internal dissent not seen in decades, as traditionalists took aim at teachings and writings they saw as sometimes contradictory to Catholic doctrine.
Francis’ death will remove a figure from the world stage who strongly argued in favour of social justice.
Francis clashed with the Trump Administration and European governments over anti-migrant policies and sought to elevate the issue of dignity for the poor and propel forward the fight against climate change.
To varying degrees, on both sides of the Atlantic, all of his banner causes are now under fire.
Any friction subsided for a moment as world leaders - including populists he had sparred with - paid tribute. They included Trump, whom Francis met in 2017. During a photo opportunity with the beaming US leader, the Pope appeared visibly glum.
“Rest in Peace Pope Francis! May God Bless him and all who loved him!” Trump said in a brief statement on his Truth Social account.
In a statement on X, former President Joe Biden said Pope Francis was “unlike any who came before him”, calling him the “People’s Pope”. Biden, the second Catholic president in US history, said the Pope “commanded us to fight for peace and protect our planet from a climate crisis. He advocated for the voiceless and powerless.”
Javier Milei, President of Argentina - Francis’ birth country - said he was saddened to learn of his death, while alluding to past tensions. “Despite differences that seem minor today, having been able to know him in his kindness and wisdom was a true honour for me,” Milei wrote on X.
He had previously described Francis as an “imbecile who defends social justice”, among other harsh language. Argentina and Brazil both announced week-long periods of mourning.
If Francis was revolutionary, it was through a change in style and tone rather than substance.
On several reforms, he would draw a firm line - ruling out, for instance, the idea of married priests.
Within Vatican City, he would allow women to finally shatter the stained-glass ceiling by promoting them to jobs of unprecedented power.
But while he permitted discussions on the ordination of women as deacons to move forward, he effectively declared that such a change would not come to pass during his papacy.
He sought to build a less top-down church by bringing more laypeople into the decision-making process.
He never altered church teachings that described homosexuality as “intrinsically disordered” and “evil”. But his famous “who am I to judge?” comment when questioned about homosexuality in 2013 would signal the start of a pastoral rapprochement with a LGBTQ+ community long alienated by the church.
A decade later, and after making statements in favour of secular civil unions for same-sex couples that were remarkable for a Catholic pontiff, he authorised priests to offer short blessings to some same-sex couples - a move that cost the Pope enormous capital as traditionalists in Africa, parts of Asia, and elsewhere strongly pushed back against the idea.
“Those words, ‘who am I to judge’, by themselves opened the doors that were shut to us,” said Innocenzo Pontillo, co-ordinator of Kairos, a group of LGBTQ+ Catholics in Italy.
“It wasn’t about one document he put out. The greatest thing he did was to call the church to open its doors to us. Because of him, there is hardly a diocese in Italy now that refuses to collaborate with us. That, to me, is change.”
Traditionalists took issue not only with Francis’ outreach.Some also argued that his teachings were contradictory or vague.
American conservative Catholics also deeply opposed his efforts to stamp out the Latin Mass, a rite that Francis saw as furthering the notion of a remote, imperious church he often spoke out against.
It would come to symbolise Francis’ long-standing clash with conservative Catholics in the US, whom the Pope in 2023 would describe as “reactionary” and “backward looking”.
By the time Vance, who has at times found common ground with conservative Catholics in the US, visited Francis on Sunday, the Pope was in no state to be combative.
“I know you’ve not been feeling great, but it’s good to see you in better health,” Vance said to Francis, sitting down facing the Pope in his wheelchair.
“Thank you very much for your visit,” an interpreter for Francis said to the Vice-President, though the Pope could be heard saying very little.
Francis’ last speech at Easter, calling for mercy for the vulnerable and marginalised, in many ways echoed the words he spoke to cardinals ahead of the 2013 conclave in which he was elected.
They were the words that many believe helped inspire his peers to elevate him, and came to define Francis’ “papacy of the peripheries”.
“The church is called to come out of herself and to go to the peripheries, not only geographically, but also the existential peripheries: the mystery of sin, of pain, of injustice, of ignorance and indifference to religion, of intellectual currents, and of all misery,” Francis had said.
