Pope Francis, the Roman Catholic Church’s first top leader from Latin America and a self-styled champion of marginalized communities, died Monday, Vatican officials said.
He was 88, and had met with U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance just a day before his death.
During his 12 years as pope, he worked to build a foundation for including the people of the Global South more fully in the church’s operations; denounced racism; cracked the door to recognition for LGBTQ Catholics; and focused on justice issues, particularly those related to the environment and poverty.
“My people are poor and I am one of them,” he said multiple times.
The College of Cardinals will meet soon to choose a successor for a pope who spoke for marginalized groups in a way that few of his predecessors had.
Pope Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 1936 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to parents of Italian heritage. He attended schools in the city and held jobs as a janitor, chemical technician, and famously, a bouncer, before pursuing priesthood.
Bergoglio became a priest in 1969; a member of the Society of Jesus, commonly known as Jesuits, in 1973; and was named Bishop of Auca and Auxiliary of Buenos Aires in 1992, according to his official Vatican biography. He was named Archbishop in 1997 and Cardinal in 2001.
IDENTITY, POVERTY, IMMIGRATION
His fellow cardinals selected him as the church’s first pope from the Americas and first Jesuit pope on March 13, 2013, just more than two weeks after the historic resignation of his predecessor, Benedict XVI. He chose the name “Francis” after St. Francis of Assisi, signaling that he might try to show the same concern for the impoverished, marginalized and nature as his namesake.
From the very beginning, it was clear that his papacy would have to contend with issues of identity, starting with his very own. The new pope was from Argentina, but with his Italian heritage and surname, could he be considered Latino? The general consensus turned out to be “maybe.”
As pope of the world’s more than 1.3 billion Roman Catholics, though, he leaned into his experiences in the Global South, prioritizing the appointments of cardinals from South America, Asia and Africa for the group of cardinal electors who will choose the next pope, shifting the geographic balance of the church. Among them are cardinals chosen for the first time from Papua New Guinea and Singapore. Traditionally, the overwhelming majority of electors have been from Europe. Today, just 54 are from Europe, with 84 from the rest of the world (including 18 from South America, 24 from Asia and 18 from Africa).
He also urged richer nations to create a pool of money, a tiny amount of what they spend on weapons, to combat climate change and hunger. He also said they should cancel the debt of poorer nations.
He wrote in his message for World Peace Day 2025 that foreign debt “has become a means of control whereby certain governments and private financial institutions of the richer countries unscrupulously and indiscriminately exploit the human and natural resources of poorer countries, simply to satisfy the demands of their own markets.”
His interest in current affairs stretched to the plight of migrants. He consistently expressed deep concern about the treatment of immigrants throughout the world, with special worries about the way disinformation, misinformation and violence targeted them.
TAKING A STAND
Pope Francis also added his voice to the chorus against racial discrimination, including his famous 2021 “Racism is a virus” tweet.
He specifically urged Latino and Caribbean Catholics to resist efforts by reactionary forces to homogenize the church and culture in general.
“We want to learn to be a church with a mestizo, indigenous, Afro-American face,” he said at a 2017 Mass at the Vatican, according to NBC News. “A face that is poor, unemployed, of children, old and young so that no one feels sterile or shameful or worthless.”
He also wrote a response by hand to 83 Black Brazilian priests who wrote in 2020 to ask him to be aware of the difficulties they face in their country and as Black Catholic priests generally, according to the National Catholic Reporter. That he wrote a response in his own handwriting was considered especially significant and an indication of strong feelings about the men’s letter.
In 2020, he appointed Wilton Daniel Gregory, then Archbishop of Washington, D.C., and former Archbishop of Atlanta, as the first Black American cardinal.
And in 2022, Pope Francis apologized to Inuit people in Canada for the mistreatment of Native children in residential schools. That year, he also praised the widespread movement after the death of George Floyd in the U.S., and acknowledged particular concerns of Black American Catholics, Black Catholic Messenger wrote.
Most strikingly, Pope Francis maintained cordial relationships with advocates for the Catholic LGBTQ community. People who tracked his public statements and actions on the matter said his papacy reflected the church evolving, slowly, on the issue.
However, he was not considered progressive on issues related to transgender people, reportedly considering gender theory to be akin to nuclear war and genetic manipulation, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
He ultimately said he approved of Catholic blessings for same-sex couples — while maintaining that such blessings could not be offered if they were too similar to the ritual of marriage. The statement alarmed conservative factions in the church, which led him to further reaffirm the church’s holdings that homosexuality itself is not a sin but that sexual acts outside of marriage are sins.
Pope Francis dies with a mixed record but with his reputation for a commitment to the poor and marginalized mostly intact.
In his final months, he doubled down, decrying the Trump administration’s plans to deport immigrants en masse, opening a door for the Year of Jubilee at an Italian prison and communicating with Palestinian Gaza Catholics nearly daily amid conflict in their homeland.
