The pontiff, who was Bishop of Rome and head of the Catholic Church, became pope in 2013 after the resignation of his predecessor Benedict XVI.
After being discharged on 23 March, he welcomed King Charles and Queen Camilla at the Vatican two weeks ago before greeting crowds at the Easter Sunday Service in his final public appearance.
Pope Francis was hospitalised on 14 February (Photo: Antonio Masiello/Getty Images)
Even those who admired him had to acknowledge that he did not always deliver. He failed to ensure the Catholic Church had a robust safeguarding system to protect children against sexual abuse by priests. And although he promoted a few women to be Vatican officials, he did not budge on women’s ordination.
Pope Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 1936 in Buenos Aires, the child of an Italian migrant couple. He worked in various jobs in his youth, including being a bouncer, a janitor and a chemist. He developed a passion for football and the tango.
(Photo: Vatican Pool/Getty Images)
His conservative, authoritarian style concerned the leaders of the Jesuit order in Rome so much so, that in 1990 they stripped him of his responsibilities and banished him for two years to Cordoba, in the south of Argentina.
He was elected pope by his fellow cardinals in 2013, after the shock resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, and took the papal name of Francis, to indicate that, like St Francis of Assisi, his priorities were the poor and God’s creation.
He also created a Council of Cardinal Advisers to examine the Roman Curia – the governing operation of the Roman Catholic Church. He made considerable use of synods, calling them to further engage the laity and bishops around the world in the Catholic Church’s decision-making.
There was a sympathetic reaction, underlining his understanding of people’s troubles. After a synod on the family in 2014 and 2015 and a suggestion that parish priests should individually decide whether divorced and remarried Catholics should receive Communion, he said that that “the confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy”.
Joe Biden met the Pope while in Rome for the G20 summit (Photo: Vatican Media)Conservatives also raised their eyebrows when he was asked about the gay community. “If a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge that person?” he said.
The Pope was also influential on other global matters. He helped to broker full diplomatic relations between America and Cuba, which he himself had visited in 2015, and spoke out against the death penalty, committing the Catholic Church to its global abolition.
In 2018, the Chinese government and the Vatican signed an agreement that allowed Beijing to have more control over the so-called underground Church – the one that comes under the jurisdiction of Rome. The deal also allowed the Vatican to have more control over the appointment of bishops in the state-approved Patriotic Catholic Church.
Pope Francis arrives to preside over a Mass in St Peter Basilica at the Vatican on 19 November 2023 (Photo: Andrew Medichini/AP)The pact was renewed twice in 2020 and 2022, but by the end of 2022, the Vatican showed signs of becoming disillusioned by Beijing, accusing it of installing a bishop in a diocese that the Church did not recognise.
In 2014, he set up the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, an advisory body within the Vatican, to evaluate the Church’s work and initiate reforms. But some of its members became increasingly disillusioned about the extent to which the Church was willing to change and quit.
Throughout his pontificate, Pope Francis was both vilified and praised for his management of the Church and his interventions on the global stage. Sometimes he was accused of naivety, and considering people in too positive a light. Sometimes he was accused of being too biased towards left-wing politics.
At the start of the Covid pandemic he stood, completely alone, in St Peter’s Square and reflected on the world’s fears.
The pandemic, he said, was “a time to choose what matters and what passes away, a time to separate what is necessary from what is not”.
Catherine Pepinster is a former editor of The Tablet, the Catholic weekly
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