Pope Francis, groundbreaking leader of Catholic Church, dies at age 88

CBS News

21-04-2025

Rome
— Pope Francis, who challenged deeply rooted norms and made it his mission to change the perception of the Catholic Church around the world, has died at the age of 88. The Vatican said Francis died just after 7:30 a.m. local time on Monday, a day after Easter.
Francis had experienced a number of health issues in recent years, including two
abdominal
surgeries
and several serious
respiratory infections
. He spent spent
five weeks
in the
hospital
in February and March 2025 with bronchitis that developed into
pneumonia
in both lungs. He marked the
12th anniversary of his papacy
from his hospital room in Rome.
The pontiff was pushed in a wheelchair into the room for an interview
at his Vatican residence
with CBS News' Norah O'Donnell in April 2024. But while he was having difficulty walking, he spoke clearly during the
hourlong conversation
about his prayers for an end to the
wars in Gaza
and
Ukraine
. In more recent appearances, however, the pontiff clearly struggled for breath as he delivered planned remarks.
After being elected by his fellow Catholic cardinals in 2013, Francis set the tone with his first official act as pope, reversing a centuries-old tradition — by simply asking for help.
Normally after a new pope is elected, they come out and bless the masses gathered at St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. But when Francis was elected, he came out and first asked the faithful to bless and pray for him.
"I want to ask you a favor," he said. "Before the bishop blesses the people, I ask that you would pray to the lord to bless me."
It may seem a subtle change, but along with his familiar greeting and farewell to the crowd in Italian that day, it set the tone for his entire papacy. Francis made it clear that he identified himself as a brother pilgrim, not as an imperial pope. He didn't want to keep leading a one-way monologue from the highest post in the Catholic Church, but a dialogue.
As pope, the man previously known as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose to name himself after Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of Italy, known for his simplicity and humanity.
The first pope from the New World, born and raised in Argentina, he said he wanted "a poorer Church" and one that would "include the excluded."
He set an example by choosing to live in Room 201 at the Santa Marta — a small Vatican hotel usually used for visiting priests — rather than in the lavish papal apartments used by his predecessors. Francis carried his own bag, and walked across Rome to buy his own pair of glasses.
His desire to reach out to ordinary people sent the bulletproof "popemobiles" into storage.
"I cannot greet people from inside a sardine can," Francis famously explained, "even if it is made of glass."
He became one of the most popular public figures in the world, regularly speaking up for the voiceless and leading by example — whether that was by dining with the homeless, washing inmates' feet, or providing a home in Italy for migrants and refugees fleeing war or economic instability.
Francis railed against consumerism and individualism, and he insisted that "unfair economic structures" were a violation of human rights.
He also pushed for progress in combating climate change, even publishing an encyclical — a formal letter from himself to Catholic leaders around the world — on the topic. And he reformed the Curia — the central administration of the church — allowing lay men and women to run Vatican offices, positions historically reserved for cardinals and bishops.
Francis continued to give his public prayers during the coronavirus lockdowns, but with crowds banned, "the people's pope" was left to deliver his messages in an empty St. Peter's Square.
Wasting no time after getting his COVID vaccine, Francis made a daring, first-ever
papal visit to Iraq
, despite immense security risks. In Mosul, where ISIS militants once ransacked churches, Pope Francis prayed in them.
A few months later, his health finally caught up with him. He spent 10 days
in a Rome hospital
in July 2021 recovering from a scheduled surgery to remove part of his colon. It was the first time he was hospitalized after being named pope.
In 2022, a torn knee ligament forced Francis to finally
slow down
. He was using a wheelchair and canceling both Vatican celebrations and overseas trips, generating persistent rumors that Francis, like Pope Benedict XVI, would
resign
. When
Benedict died
, Francis
presided over
his funeral, the first time in modern history a pope has laid his predecessor to rest.
Over time, Francis' papacy began to be defined by a topic he did not choose: the wave of clerical sex abuse scandals that stretched to the very highest levels of the Catholic Church. He was accused, at first, of being insensitive in his slow response to the crisis.
Then he tried to take control of the narrative, notably summoning senior clerics from around the world to the Vatican in early 2019. From that meeting came new Vatican laws about sex abuse, and a mandate that every diocese set up a clear reporting process. Francis also abolished the top-level confidentiality of the "pontifical secret," which had shrouded the sex abuse crisis in yet another layer of systemic secrecy.
His diplomatic skill was on display when he
played a key role
in restoring relations between the United States and its decades-old enemy, Cuba.
Francis' simple style was a product of his humble beginnings. He was born in 1936 to an immigrant Italian railway worker and a housewife in Buenos Aires, Argentina. As a young man, he lost part of a lung to an infection. He worked at various menial jobs and studied chemistry.
After being ordained as a priest at the late age of 32, he made visiting the slums of Buenos Aires and caring for the city's poor a feature of his ministry.
During a press conference aboard one papal flight years later, he appeared to crack open a space for homosexuals in the church, with a single, highly symbolic phrase: "Who am I to judge?"
he asked
when a reporter fired him a question about LGBTQ rights.
But while he may have received widespread credit for changing the tone of the church when it comes to acceptance, the church's teachings and policy did not change.
Despite drawing fire from Catholic conservatives for being too liberal, Francis reaffirmed long-standing church doctrines
opposing same-sex marriage
, and on pretty much everything else from birth control to
ordaining women
.
Francis claimed that he only brought a small bag to the papal conclave in 2013 that saw him elected, because he expected to be going back home to Argentina.
Instead, neither his life, nor the papacy, were ever the same again.