Pope Francis, the Catholic church’s first Latin American pope, has died at 88. He rose from a humble childhood in Argentina to become the leader of the world’s largest and most powerful church.
Francis died at about 7:30 a.m. Rome time, the Vatican announced. He had recently spent five weeks in a hospital for pneumonia. Still, he appeared yesterday in a wheelchair to bless tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square for Easter Sunday. Last week, he went to a prison in Rome and told the inmates he wanted “to be close to you. I pray for you and your families.” Asked by reporters at the prison how he was doing, he said: “As best I can.”
For 12 years, Francis led more than one billion Catholics and reshaped the faith to make it more inclusive. He clashed with traditionalists as he reached out to migrants, gay Catholics and victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. He sought to improve relations with Muslim clerics. He criticized the powerful for their role in climate change and called for an end to wars. He filled Catholic leadership with bishops who reflected the worldwide congregation. No matter the state of global politics, he never changed his approach.
“Francis believed that the church’s future depended on going to the margins to embrace the faithful in the modern world rather than offering a cloister away from it,”