{"id":664151,"date":"2025-04-21T12:05:18","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T09:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/pope-francis-first-latin-american-pontiff-dies-at-88\/"},"modified":"2025-04-21T12:05:18","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T09:05:18","slug":"pope-francis-first-latin-american-pontiff-dies-at-88","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/pope-francis-first-latin-american-pontiff-dies-at-88\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Francis, First Latin American Pontiff, Dies at 88"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\n\tPope Francis, history\u2019s first Latin American pontiff who charmed the world with his humble style and concern for the poor but alienated conservatives with critiques of capitalism and climate change, died Monday. He was 88.<\/p>\n

\n\tBells tolled in church towers across Rome after the announcement, which was read out by Cardinal Kevin Ferrell, the Vatican camerlengo, from the chapel of the Domus Santa Marta, where Francis lived.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAt 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the home of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and of his Church,\u2033 Ferrell said.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrancis, who suffered from chronic lung disease and had part of one lung removed as a young man, was admitted to Gemelli hospital on Feb. 14, 2025, for a respiratory crisis that developed into double pneumonia. He spent 38 days there, the longest hospitalization of his 12-year papacy.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut he emerged on Easter Sunday \u2014 a day before his death \u2014 to bless thousands of people in St. Peter\u2019s Square and treat them to a surprise popemobile romp through the piazza, drawing wild cheers and app<\/a>lause.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom his first greeting as pope \u2014 a remarkably normal \u201cBuonasera\u201d (\u201cGood evening\u201d) \u2014 to his embrace of refugees and the downtrodden, Francis signaled a very different tone for the papacy, stressing humility over hubris for a Catholic Church beset by scandal and accusations of indifference.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter that rainy night on March 13, 2013, the Argentine-born Jorge Mario Bergoglio brought a breath of fresh air into a 2,000-year-old institution that had seen its influence wane during the troubled tenure of Pope Benedict XVI, whose surprise resignation led to Francis\u2019 election.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Francis soon invited troubles of his own, and conservatives grew increasingly upset with his progressive bent, outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics and crackdown on traditionalists. His greatest test came in 2018 when he botched a notorious case of clergy sexual abuse in Chile, and the scandal that festered under his predecessors erupted anew on his watch.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd then Francis, the crowd-loving, globe-trotting pope of the peripheries, navigated the unprecedented reality of leading a universal religion through the coronavirus pandemic from a locked-down Vatican City.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe implored the world to use COVID-19 as an opportunity to rethink the economic and political framework that he said had turned rich against poor.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe have realized that we are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented,\u201d Francis told an empty St. Peter\u2019s Square in March 2020. But he also stressed the pandemic showed the need for \u201call of us to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tReforming the Vatican
Francis was elected on a mandate to reform the Vatican bureaucracy and finances but went further in shaking up the church without changing its core doctrine. \u201cWho am I to judge?\u201d he replied when asked about a purportedly gay priest.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe comment sent a message of welcome to the LGBTQ+ community and those who felt shunned by a church that had stressed sexual propriety over unconditional love. \u201cBeing homosexual is not a crime,\u201d he told The Associated Press in 2023, urging an end to civil laws that criminalize it.<\/p>\n

\n\tStressing mercy, Francis changed the church\u2019s position on the death penalty, calling it inadmissible in all circumstances. He also declared the possession of nuclear weapons, not just their use, was \u201cimmoral.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn other firsts, he approved an agreement with China over bishop nominations that had vexed the Vatican for decades, met the Russian patriarch and charted new relations with the Muslim world by visiting the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe reaffirmed the all-male, celibate priesthood and upheld the church\u2019s opposition to abortion, equating it to \u201chiring a hitman to solve a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRoles for women
But he added women to important decision-making roles and allowed them to serve as lectors and acolytes in parishes. He let women vote alongside bishops in periodic Vatican meetings, following longstanding complaints that women do much of the church\u2019s work but are barred from power.<\/p>\n

\n\tSister Nathalie Becquart, whom Francis named to one of the highest Vatican jobs, said his legacy was a vision of a church where men and women existed in a relationship of reciprocity and respect.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was about shifting a pattern of domination \u2014 from human being to the creation, from men to women \u2014 to a pattern of cooperation,\u201d said Becquart, the first woman to hold a voting position in a Vatican synod.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe church as refuge
While Francis did not allow women to be ordained, the voting reform was part of a revolutionary change in emphasizing what the church should be: a refuge for everyone \u2014 \u201ctodos, todos, todos\u201d (\u201ceveryone, everyone, everyone\u201d) \u2014 not for the privileged few. Migrants, the poor, prisoners and outcasts were invited to his table far more than presidents or powerful CEOs.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor Pope Francis, it was always to extend the arms of the church to embrace all people, not to exclude anyone,\u201d said Cardinal Kevin Farrell, whom Francis named as camerlengo, taking charge after a pontiff\u2019s death or retirement.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrancis demanded his bishops apply mercy and charity to their flocks, pressed the world to protect God\u2019s creation from climate disaster, and challenged countries to welcome those fleeing war, poverty and oppression.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter visiting Mexico in 2016, Francis said of then-U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump that anyone building a wall to keep migrants out \u201cis not Christian.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile progressives were thrilled with Francis\u2019 radical focus on Jesus\u2019 message of mercy and inclusion, it troubled conservatives who feared he watered down Catholic teaching and threatened the very Christian identity of the West. Some even called him a heretic.<\/p>\n

\n\tA few cardinals openly challenged him. Francis usually responded with his typical answer to conflict: silence.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe made it easier for married Catholics to get an annulment, allowed priests to absolve women who had had abortions and decreed that priests could bless same-sex couples. He opened debate on issues like homosexuality and divorce, giving pastors wiggle room to discern how to accompany their flocks, rather than handing them strict rules to apply.<\/p>\n

\n\tSt. Francis of Assisi as a model
Francis lived in the Vatican hotel instead of the Apostolic Palace, wore his old orthotic shoes and not the red loafers of the papacy, and rode in compact cars. It wasn\u2019t a gimmick.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI see clearly that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful,\u201d he told a Jesuit journal in 2013. \u201cI see the church as a field hospital after battle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIf becoming the first Latin American and first Jesuit pope wasn\u2019t enough, Francis was also the first to name himself after St. Francis of Assisi, the 13th century friar known for personal simplicity, a message of peace, and care for nature and society\u2019s outcasts.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrancis sought out the unemployed, the sick, the disabled and the homeless. He formally apologized to Indigenous peoples for the crimes of the church from colonial times onward.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd he himself suffered: He had part of his colon removed in 2021, then needed more surgery in 2023 to repair a painful hernia and remove intestinal scar tissue. Starting in 2022 he regularly used a wheelchair or cane because of bad knees, and endured bouts of bronchitis.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe went to society\u2019s fringes to minister with mercy: caressing the grossly deformed head of a man in St. Peter\u2019s Square, kissing the tattoo of a Holocaust survivor, or inviting Argentina\u2019s garbage scavengers to join him onstage in Rio de Janeiro.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe have always been marginalized, but Pope Francis always helped us,\u201d said Coqui Vargas, a transgender woman whose Roman community forged a unique relationship with Francis during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis first trip<\/a> as pope was to the island of Lampedusa, then the epicenter of Europe\u2019s migration crisis. He consistently chose to visit poor countries where Christians were often persecuted minorities, rather than the centers of global Catholicism.<\/p>\n

\n\tFriend and fellow Argentine, Bishop Marcelo S\u00e1nchez Sorondo, said his concern for the poor and disenfranchised was based on the Beatitudes \u2014 the eight blessings Jesus delivered in the Sermon on the Mount for the meek, the merciful, the poor in spirit and others.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhy are the Beatitudes the program of this pontificate? Because they were the basis of Jesus Christ\u2019s own program,\u201d S\u00e1nchez said.<\/p>\n

\n\tMissteps on sexual abuse scandal
But more than a year passed before Francis met with survivors of priestly sexual abuse, and victims\u2019 groups initially questioned whether he really understood the scope of the problem.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrancis did create a sex abuse commission to advise the church on best practices, but it lost its influence after a few years and its recommendation of a tribunal to judge bishops who covered up for predator priests went nowhere.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd then came the greatest crisis of his papacy, when he discredited Chilean abuse victims in 2018 and stood by a controversial bishop linked to their abuser. Realizing his error, Francis invited the victims to the Vatican for a personal mea culpa and summoned the leadership of the Chilean church to resign en masse.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs that crisis concluded, a new one erupted over ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the retired archbishop of Washington and a counselor to three popes.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrancis had actually moved swiftly to sideline McCarrick amid an accusation he had molested a teenage altar boy in the 1970s. But Francis nevertheless was accused by the Vatican\u2019s one-time U.S. ambassador of having rehabilitated McCarrick early in his papacy.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrancis eventually defrocked McCarrick after a Vatican investigation determined he sexually abused adults as well as minors. He changed church law to remove the pontifical secret surrounding abuse cases and enacted procedures to investigate bishops who abused or covered for their pedophile priests, seeking to end impunity for the hierarchy.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe sincerely wanted to do something and he transmitted that,\u201d said Juan Carlos Cruz, a Chilean abuse survivor Francis discredited who later developed a close friendship with the pontiff.<\/p>\n

\n\tA change from Benedict
The road to Francis\u2019 2013 election was paved by Pope Benedict XVI\u2019s decision to resign and retire \u2014 the first in 600 years \u2014 and it created the unprecedented reality of two popes living in the Vatican.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrancis didn\u2019t shy from Benedict\u2019s potentially uncomfortable shadow. He embraced him as an elder statesman and adviser, coaxing him out of his cloistered retirement to participate in the public life of the church.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s like having your grandfather in the house, a wise grandfather,\u201d Francis said.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrancis praised Benedict by saying he \u201copened the door\u201d to others following suit, fueling speculation that Francis also might retire. But after Benedict\u2019s death on Dec. 31, 2022, he asserted that in principle the papacy is a job for life.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrancis\u2019 looser liturgical style and pastoral priorities made clear he and the German-born theologian came from very different religious traditions, and Francis directly overturned several decisions of his predecessor.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe made sure Salvadoran Archbishop \u00d3scar Romero, a hero to the liberation theology movement in Latin America, was canonized after his case languished under Benedict over concerns about the credo\u2019s Marxist bent.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrancis reimposed restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass that Benedict had relaxed, arguing the spread of the Tridentine Rite was divisive. The move riled Francis\u2019 traditionalist critics and opened sustained conflict between right-wing Catholics, particularly in the U.S., and the Argentine pope.<\/p>\n

\n\tConservatives oppose Francis
By then, conservatives had already turned away from Francis, betrayed after he opened debate on allowing remarried Catholics to receive the sacraments if they didn\u2019t get an annulment \u2014 a church ruling that their first marriage was invalid.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe don\u2019t like this pope,\u201d headlined Italy\u2019s conservative daily Il Foglio a few months into the papacy, reflecting the unease of the small but vocal traditionalist Catholic movement that was coddled under Benedict.<\/p>\n

\n\tThose same critics amplified their complaints after Francis\u2019 approved church blessings for same-sex couples, and a controversial accord with China over nominating bishops.<\/p>\n

\n\tIts details were never released, but conservative critics bashed it as a sellout to communist China, while the Vatican defended it as the best deal it could get with Beijing.<\/p>\n

\n\tU.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke, a figurehead in the anti-Francis opposition, said the church had become \u201clike a ship without a rudder.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBurke waged his opposition campaign for years, starting when Francis fired him as the Vatican\u2019s supreme court justice and culminating with his vocal opposition to Francis\u2019 2023 synod on the church\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

\n\tTwice, he joined other conservative cardinals in formally asking Francis to explain himself on doctrine issues reflecting a more progressive bent, including on the possibility of same-sex blessings and his outreach to divorced and civilly remarried Catholics.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrancis eventually sanctioned Burke financially, accusing him of sowing \u201cdisunity.\u201d It was one of several personnel moves he made in both the Vatican and around the world to shift the balance of power from doctrinaire leaders to more pastoral ones.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrancis insisted his bishops and cardinals imbue themselves with the \u201codor of their flock\u201d and minister to the faithful, voicing displeasure when they didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis 2014 Christmas address to the Vatican Curia was one of the greatest public papal reprimands ever: Standing in the marbled Apostolic Palace, Francis ticked off 15 ailments that he said can afflict his closest collaborators, including \u201cspiritual Alzheimer\u2019s,\u201d lusting for power and the \u201cterrorism of gossip.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTrying to eliminate corruption, Francis oversaw the reform of the scandal-marred Vatican bank and sought to wrestle Vatican bureaucrats into financial line, limiting their compensation and ability to receive gifts or award public contracts.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe authorized Vatican police to raid his own secretariat of state and the Vatican\u2019s financial watchdog agency amid suspicions about a 350 million euro investment in a London real estate venture. After a 2 1\/2-year trial, the Vatican tribunal convicted a once-powerful cardinal, Angelo Becciu, of embezzlement and returned mixed verdicts to nine others, acquitting one.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe trial, though, proved to be a reputational boomerang for the Holy See, showing deficiencies in the Vatican\u2019s legal system, unseemly turf battles among monsignors, and how the pope had intervened on behalf of prosecutors.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile earning praise for trying to turn the Vatican\u2019s finances around, Francis angered U.S. conservatives for his frequent excoriation of the global financial market that favors the rich over the poor.<\/p>\n

\n\tEconomic justice was an important themes of his papacy, and he didn\u2019t hide it in his first meeting with journalists when he said he wanted a \u201cpoor church that is for the poor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his first major teaching document, \u201cThe Joy of the Gospel,\u201d Francis denounced trickle-down economic theories as unproven and naive, based on a mentality \u201cwhere the powerful feed upon the powerless\u201d with no regard for ethics, the environment or even God.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMoney must serve, not rule!\u201d he said in urging political reforms.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe elaborated on that in his major eco-encyclical \u201cPraised Be,\u201d denouncing the \u201cstructurally perverse\u201d global economic system that he said exploited the poor and risked turning Earth into \u201can immense pile of filth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSome U.S. conservatives branded Francis a Marxist. He jabbed back by saying he had many friends who were Marxists.<\/p>\n

\n\tSoccer, opera and prayer
Born Dec. 17, 1936, in Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was the eldest of five children of Italian immigrants.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe credited his devout grandmother Rosa with teaching him how to pray. Weekends were spent listening to opera on the radio, going to Mass and attending matches of the family\u2019s beloved San Lorenzo soccer club. As pope, his love of soccer brought him a huge collection of jerseys from visitors.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe said he received his religious calling at 17 while going to confession, recounting in a 2010 biography that, \u201cI don\u2019t know what it was, but it changed my life. \u2026 I realized that they were waiting for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe entered the diocesan seminary but switched to the Jesuit order in 1958, attracted to its missionary tradition and militancy.<\/p>\n

\n\tAround this time, he suffered from pneumonia, which led to the removal of the upper part of his right lung. His frail health prevented him from becoming a missionary, and his less-than-robust lung capacity was perhaps responsible for his whisper of a voice and reluctance to sing at Mass.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Dec. 13, 1969, he was ordained a priest, and immedia<\/a>tely began teaching. In 1973, he was named head of the Jesuits in Argentina, an appointment he later acknowledged was \u201ccrazy\u201d given he was only 36. \u201cMy authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative,\u201d he admitted in his Civilta Cattolica interview.<\/p>\n

\n\tLife under Argentina\u2019s dictatorship
His six-year tenure as provincial coincided with Argentina\u2019s murderous 1976-83 dictatorship, when the military launched a campaign against left-wing guerrillas and other regime opponents.<\/p>\n

\n\tBergoglio didn\u2019t publicly confront the junta and was accused of effectively allowing two slum priests to be kidnapped and tortured by not publicly endorsing their work.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe refused for decades to counter that version of events. Only in a 2010 authorized biography did he finally recount the behind-the-scenes lengths he used to save them, persuading the family priest of feared dictator Jorge Videla to call in sick so he could say Mass instead. Once in the junta leader\u2019s home, Bergoglio privately appealed for mercy. Both priests were eventually released, among the few to have survived prison.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs pope, accounts began to emerge of the many people \u2014 priests, seminarians and political dissidents \u2014 whom Bergoglio actually saved during the \u201cdirty war,\u201d letting them stay incognito at the seminary or helping them escape the country.<\/p>\n

\n\tBergoglio went to Germany in 1986 to research a never-finished thesis. Returning to Argentina, he was stationed in Cordoba during a period he described as a time of \u201cgreat interior crisis.\u201d Out of favor with more progressive Jesuit leaders, he was eventually rescued from obscurity in 1992 by St. John Paul II, who named him an auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires. He became archbishop six years later, and was made a cardinal in 2001.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe came close to becoming pope in 2005 when Benedict was elected, gaining the second-most votes in several rounds of balloting before bowing out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our Social Media category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pope Francis, history\u2019s first Latin American pontiff who charmed the world with his humble style and concern for the poor but alienated conservatives with critiques of capitalism and climate change, died Monday. He was 88. Bells tolled in church towers across Rome after the announcement, which was read out by Cardinal Kevin Ferrell, the Vatican…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":664152,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/GettyImages-2210546713-1.jpg?w=1296&h=730&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[124783,71750],"class_list":["post-664151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-international","tag-pope-francis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}