In the morning of April 21, 2025, Pope Francis passed away at the age of 88 after twelve years as the head of the Catholic church and the Vatican. His death in his residence at the Vatican’s Domus Sanctae Marthae occurred on Easter Monday, just the morning after he made his final public appearance, in which he called for peace in Gaza in an Easter Sunday address in Saint Peter’s square. In the months leading up to his death, the pope has experienced health issues such as pneumonia and kidney failure, though he had returned to his residence to continue his recovery after previously being hospitalized.
Born Jorge Bergoglio in Argentina in 1936, Francis made history as the first pope from the Americas, and the first from outside of Europe for over one thousand years. He was also the first from the Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuit order. Becoming the pope upon the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and the subsequent papal conclave, he adopted the name Francis in remembrance of Saint Francis of Assisi, who was remembered for his care of the poor: “He brought to Christianity an idea of poverty against the luxury, pride, vanity of the civil and ecclesiastical powers of the time. He changed history,” he explained in his book On Heaven and Earth in 2011.
Francis’ time as the head of the Catholic church was marked by profound change from the papacies of his predecessors. In addition to the forgoing of luxuries such as the papal apartments enjoyed by previous popes, he also enacted progressive reforms such as the expansion of the role of women in the Roman Curia in administering the church, and allowing of non-liturgical blessings to LGBTQ+ people. While these changes have been praised for representing progress within a conservative institution, it has also provoked the ire of the church’s more conservative members.
After a nine-day mourning period and a funeral mass on April 26, a papal conclave comprising 133 cardinals convened on May 7 to elect a successor to Francis. The next morning, it elected Leo XIV, born Robert Prevost. A Chicago native, his election marks the second consecutive pope to hail from the Americas.
