Hundreds of millions of Catholics were in mourning as the death of Pope Francis was confirmed by the Vatican today. The 88-year-old had fought pneumonia, one of the respiratory illnesses which blighted his life due to the loss of part of one lung in his youth.
Elected the 266th pontiff on March 13, 2013, he won widespread acclaim for his humble approach but was no stranger to controversy. He ended his time as head of the Catholic church as it had begun, standing up for the most vulnerable in society including victims of war. A speech delivered on his behalf while he was in hospital condemned Russia’s war with Ukraine just ahead of the third anniversary of the invasion.
Two weeks after his surprise election as pontiff, he held the traditional Maundy Thursday ritual of washing the feet of 12 people in a youth detention centre on the outskirts of Rome, rather than one of its basilicas. The 12 included two Muslims and two young women: females were previously excluded as the disciples had all been men.
It was a deliberate act which was to set the tone for a papacy in which he urged the church to draw a line under the internal soul searching of the past and focus on the outside world. In a clear statement of intent, he took the papal name Francis, the first pope to do so, after St Francis of Assisi who devoted his life to the poor. 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. Next morning, he insisted on paying the hotel bill himself.
As in his home country of Argentina, he chose to forgo the state apartments in the Apostolic Palace used by previous incumbents, instead living in a guest house in the Vatican grounds.
For his first visit outside Rome, he travelled to the tiny island of Lampedusa to pray for the thousands of migrants who had washed up there after crossing the Mediterranean from Africa.
In one early interview, he vividly set out his vision of the church as “a field hospital after battle” ministering to the poor, the spiritually broken and the lonely.
“I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined, clinging to its own security,” he declared.
He made his first papal address in a white cassock rather than the customary papal robes, which upset conservatives but saw him named the year’s “best-dressed man” by Esquire magazine.
He spoke out passionately on the plight of migrants fleeing war and poverty, the need to tackle climate change, and warned of the dangers of capitalism. And there were apologies to the survivors of clerical child abuse; he was unafraid to address the vexed issues of sex and sexuality which had dogged the church for decades.
His call to recognise divorcees and gay people again brought him into conflict with the conservative wing of the Catholic church, which has 1.3bn followers worldwide, half of all Christians. In one of his first public pronouncements as pontiff, he declared: “Who am I to judge?” in response to a question about homosexuality. But after he suggested divorced and remarried Catholics could, under certain circumstances, receive holy communion, the backlash was such that he was described as “one of the most hated men in the world today”.
The Pope was 76 when he ascended the throne of St Peter, and had been preparing for retirement having missed out following the death of Pope John Paul II eight years earlier.
As Pope, he tried to breathe new life into the church he had served for more than half a century. It was a remarkable rise for a man who had once worked as a nightclub bouncer and a janitor before entering the priesthood.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born on December 17 1936 in the Flores district of Buenos Aires, the eldest of five children in a middle class family of Italian immigrants. He qualified as a chemical technician going on to take a job in the food processing industry. At the age of 21 he underwent surgery to have part of one of his lungs removed thanks to a severe bout of pleurisy which was to leave him vulnerable to the winter weather. For a time his career in the church seemed to have stalled, but in 1992 he was appointed auxiliary bishop of his native Buenos Aires, rising to become archbishop six years later. In 2001 he was consecrated a cardinal. He endeared himself to the city’s inhabitants with his humility and his advocacy for the poor, regularly visiting the most rundown, crime-ridden barrios earning him a reputation as the “slum bishop”. Rather than moving into the archbishop’s official residence, he chose to remain in his modest flat where he cooked his own meals, travelling around by public transport. He clashed with the government of president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner who branded him a right-wing extremist after he criticised her social reforms, including the introduction of same-sex marriage. But his down-to-earth approach made him a popular figure among his fellow bishops. When John Paul II died he reportedly secured the second highest tally of votes in a conclave of cardinals to elect a successor before bowing out in favour of the arch-conservative Joseph Ratzinger.
His moment appeared to have passed, but when Ratzinger, who took the papal name Benedict XVI, unexpectedly resigned in 2013, it was Bergoglio who came out top in the conclave securing election in the fifth round of voting. The new pope moved swiftly to clean up the scandal-ridden Vatican Bank and overhaul the curia, the Vatican bureaucracy. In 2015 he said that environmental degradation was a “moral issue”, driven by unchecked capitalism, linking sinful actions against the natural world with economic exploitation of the poor. But it was his exhortation, Amoris laetitia (the joy of love), a wide-ranging pronouncement on family issues the following year, which was to set off a firestorm within the church. It said divorcees who had remarried but not obtained an annulment, might be permitted to receive holy communion through the guidance of a priest. An open letter signed by 62 disaffected Catholics, including one retired bishop, accused the pope of heretical teaching, and four cardinals formally asked for a series of clarifications. Meanwhile, the pope was also having to deal with the legacy of decades of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests covering countries round the world. During a visit to Ireland in 2018, he acknowledged the “grave scandal” but disappointed many by failing to address demands by survivors for action. Even as his health failed, he continued to stand up for the poor and underprivileged, denouncing US President Donald Trump‘s plans for the mass deportation of migrants from the US, with a warning it was bound to “end badly”.
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