Pope Francis, first Latin American pontiff who ministered with a charming, humble style, dies at 88

VATICAN CITY AP Pope Francis history s 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 conditions change died Monday He was Bells 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 At this morning the Bishop of Rome Francis returned to the home of the Father His entire life was dedicated to the institution of the Lord and of his Church Ferrell disclosed Francis who suffered from chronic lung complaint and had part of one lung removed as a young man was admitted to Gemelli hospital on Feb for a respiratory dilemma that developed into double pneumonia He spent days there the longest hospitalization of his -year papacy But he emerged on Easter Sunday a day before his death to bless thousands of people in St Peter s Square and treat them to a surprise popemobile romp through the piazza drawing wild cheers and applause From his first greeting as pope a remarkably normal Buonasera Good evening 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 shame and accusations of indifference After that rainy night on March the Argentine-born Jorge Mario Bergoglio brought a breath of fresh air into a -year-old institution that had seen its influence wane during the troubled tenure of Pope Benedict XVI whose surprise resignation led to Francis balloting But 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 when he botched a notorious circumstance of clergy sexual abuse in Chile and the disgrace that festered under his predecessors erupted anew on his watch And 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 He implored the world to use COVID- as an opportunity to rethink the economic and political framework that he declared had turned rich against poor We have realized that we are on the same boat all of us fragile and disoriented Francis recounted an empty St Peter s Square in March But he also stressed the pandemic indicated the need for all of us to row together each of us in need of comforting the other Reforming the Vatican Francis was elected on a mandate to change the Vatican bureaucracy and finances but went further in shaking up the church without changing its core doctrine Who am I to judge he replied when petitioned about a purportedly gay priest The comment sent a message of welcome to the LGBTQ population and those who felt shunned by a church that had stressed sexual propriety over unconditional love Being homosexual is not a crime he stated The Associated Press in urging an end to civil laws that criminalize it Stressing mercy Francis changed the church s position on the death penalty calling it inadmissible in all circumstances He also declared the possession of nuclear weapons not just their use was immoral In 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 He reaffirmed the all-male celibate priesthood and upheld the church s opposition to abortion equating it to hiring a hitman to solve a difficulty Roles for women But he added women to fundamental 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 s work but are barred from power Sister Nathalie Becquart whom Francis named to one of the highest Vatican jobs disclosed his legacy was a vision of a church where men and women existed in a relationship of reciprocity and respect It was about shifting a pattern of domination from human being to the creation from men to women to a pattern of cooperation explained Becquart the first woman to hold a voting position in a Vatican synod The church as refuge While Francis did not allow women to be ordained the voting revision was part of a revolutionary change in emphasizing what the church should be a refuge for everyone todos todos todos everyone everyone everyone not for the privileged scant Displaced persons the poor prisoners and outcasts were invited to his table far more than presidents or powerful CEOs For Pope Francis it was constantly to extend the arms of the church to embrace all people not to exclude anyone announced Cardinal Kevin Farrell whom Francis named as camerlengo taking charge after a pontiff s death or retirement Francis demanded his bishops apply mercy and charity to their flocks pressed the world to protect God s creation from circumstances calamity and challenged countries to welcome those fleeing war poverty and oppression After visiting Mexico in Francis stated of then-U S presidential candidate Donald Trump that anyone building a wall to keep displaced persons out is not Christian While progressives were thrilled with Francis radical focus on Jesus message of mercy and inclusion it troubled conservatives who feared he watered down Catholic teaching and threatened the very Christian identity of the West Particular even called him a heretic A minimal cardinals openly challenged him Francis usually responded with his typical answer to conflict silence He 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 St 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 t a gimmick I see clearly that the thing the church necessities majority nowadays is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful he communicated a Jesuit journal in I see the church as a field hospital after battle If becoming the first Latin American and first Jesuit pope wasn t enough Francis was also the first to name himself after St Francis of Assisi the th century friar known for personal simplicity a message of peace and care for nature and society s outcasts Francis 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 And he himself suffered He had part of his colon removed in then needed more surgery in to repair a painful hernia and remove intestinal scar tissue Starting in he regularly used a wheelchair or cane because of bad knees and endured bouts of bronchitis He went to society s fringes to minister with mercy caressing the grossly deformed head of a man in St Peter s Square kissing the tattoo of a Holocaust survivor or inviting Argentina s garbage scavengers to join him onstage in Rio de Janeiro We have inevitably been marginalized but Pope Francis consistently helped us noted Coqui Vargas a transgender woman whose Roman neighborhood forged a unique relationship with Francis during the pandemic His first trip as pope was to the island of Lampedusa then the epicenter of Europe s migration emergency He consistently chose to visit poor countries where Christians were often persecuted minorities rather than the centers of global Catholicism Friend and fellow Argentine Bishop Marcelo S nchez Sorondo explained his concern for the poor and disenfranchised was based on the Beatitudes the eight blessings Jesus delivered in the Sermon on the Mount for the meek the merciful the poor in spirit and others Why are the Beatitudes the campaign of this pontificate Because they were the basis of Jesus Christ s own operation S nchez revealed Missteps on sexual abuse embarrassment But more than a year passed before Francis met with survivors of priestly sexual abuse and casualties groups initially questioned whether he really understood the scope of the issue Francis did create a sex abuse commission to advise the church on best practices but it lost its influence after a scarce years and its recommendation of a tribunal to judge bishops who covered up for predator priests went nowhere And then came the greatest dilemma of his papacy when he discredited Chilean abuse casualties in and stood by a controversial bishop linked to their abuser Realizing his error Francis invited the casualties to the Vatican for a personal mea culpa and summoned the leadership of the Chilean church to resign en masse As that predicament concluded a new one erupted over ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick the retired archbishop of Washington and a counselor to three popes Francis had literally moved swiftly to sideline McCarrick amid an accusation he had molested a teenage altar boy in the s But Francis nevertheless was accused by the Vatican s one-time U S ambassador of having rehabilitated McCarrick early in his papacy Francis eventually defrocked McCarrick after a Vatican assessment 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 He sincerely wished to do something and he transmitted that noted Juan Carlos Cruz a Chilean abuse survivor Francis discredited who later developed a close friendship with the pontiff A change from Benedict The road to Francis poll was paved by Pope Benedict XVI s decision to resign and retire the first in years and it created the unprecedented reality of two popes living in the Vatican Francis didn t shy from Benedict s potentially uncomfortable shadow He embraced him as an elder statesman and adviser coaxing him out of his cloistered retirement to participate in the general life of the church It s like having your grandfather in the house a wise grandfather Francis revealed Francis praised Benedict by saying he opened the door to others following suit fueling speculation that Francis also might retire But after Benedict s death on Dec he asserted that in principle the papacy is a job for life Francis 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 He made sure Salvadoran Archbishop scar Romero a hero to the liberation theology movement in Latin America was canonized after his affair languished under Benedict over concerns about the credo s Marxist bent Francis 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 traditionalist critics and opened sustained conflict between right-wing Catholics particularly in the U S and the Argentine pope Conservatives 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 t get an annulment a church ruling that their first marriage was invalid We don t like this pope headlined Italy s conservative daily Il Foglio a inadequate months into the papacy reflecting the unease of the small but vocal traditionalist Catholic movement that was coddled under Benedict Those same critics amplified their complaints after Francis approved church blessings for same-sex couples and a controversial accord with China over nominating bishops Its details were never distributed 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 U S Cardinal Raymond Burke a figurehead in the anti-Francis opposition disclosed the church had become like a ship without a rudder Burke waged his opposition campaign for years starting when Francis fired him as the Vatican s supreme court justice and culminating with his vocal opposition to Francis synod on the church s future Twice 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 Francis eventually sanctioned Burke financially accusing him of sowing disunity 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 Francis insisted his bishops and cardinals imbue themselves with the odor of their flock and minister to the faithful voicing displeasure when they didn t His Christmas address to the Vatican Curia was one of the greatest constituents papal reprimands ever Standing in the marbled Apostolic Palace Francis ticked off ailments that he mentioned can afflict his closest collaborators including spiritual Alzheimer s lusting for power and the terrorism of gossip Trying to eliminate corruption Francis oversaw the restructuring 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 general contracts He authorized Vatican police to raid his own secretariat of state and the Vatican s financial watchdog agency amid suspicions about a million euro capital in a London real estate venture After a -year trial the Vatican tribunal convicted a once-powerful cardinal Angelo Becciu of embezzlement and returned mixed verdicts to nine others acquitting one The trial though proved to be a reputational boomerang for the Holy See showing deficiencies in the Vatican s legal system unseemly turf battles among monsignors and how the pope had intervened on behalf of prosecutors While earning praise for trying to turn the Vatican s finances around Francis angered U S conservatives for his frequent excoriation of the global financial arena that favors the rich over the poor Economic justice was an significant themes of his papacy and he didn t hide it in his first meeting with journalists when he declared he requested a poor church that is for the poor In his first major teaching document The Delight of the Gospel Francis denounced trickle-down economic theories as unproven and naive based on a mentality where the powerful feed upon the powerless with no regard for ethics the atmosphere or even God Money must serve not rule he commented in urging political reforms He elaborated on that in his major eco-encyclical Praised Be denouncing the structurally perverse global economic system that he explained exploited the poor and risked turning Earth into an immense pile of filth Selected U S conservatives branded Francis a Marxist He jabbed back by saying he had plenty of friends who were Marxists Soccer opera and prayer Born Dec in Buenos Aires Jorge Mario Bergoglio was the eldest of five children of Italian immigrants He 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 s beloved San Lorenzo soccer club As pope his love of soccer brought him a huge collection of jerseys from visitors He disclosed he received his religious calling at while going to confession recounting in a biography that I don t know what it was but it changed my life I realized that they were waiting for me He entered the diocesan seminary but switched to the Jesuit order in attracted to its missionary tradition and militancy Around this time he suffered from pneumonia which led to the removal of the upper part of his right lung His frail wellbeing prevented him from becoming a missionary and his less-than-robust lung maximum was perhaps responsible for his whisper of a voice and reluctance to sing at Mass On Dec he was ordained a priest and right away began teaching In he was named head of the Jesuits in Argentina an appointment he later acknowledged was crazy given he was only My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative he admitted in his Civilta Cattolica interview Life under Argentina s dictatorship His six-year tenure as provincial coincided with Argentina s murderous - dictatorship when the military launched a campaign against left-wing guerrillas and other regime opponents Bergoglio didn t publicly confront the junta and was accused of effectively allowing two slum priests to be kidnapped and tortured by not publicly endorsing their work He refused for decades to counter that version of events Only in a authorized biography did he definitively 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 s home Bergoglio privately appealed for mercy Both priests were eventually distributed among the meager to have survived prison As pope accounts began to emerge of the various people priests seminarians and political dissidents whom Bergoglio indeed saved during the dirty war letting them stay incognito at the seminary or helping them escape the country Bergoglio went to Germany in to research a never-finished thesis Returning to Argentina he was stationed in Cordoba during a period he described as a time of great interior emergency Out of favor with more progressive Jesuit leaders he was eventually rescued from obscurity in 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 He came close to becoming pope in when Benedict was elected gaining the second-most votes in several rounds of balloting before bowing out