After a long illness from recovering from pneumonia, Catholic Pope Francis has died at age 88. In the weeks before his death, he had been making fewer public appearances to be treated for chronic lung disease, including a respiratory crisis and pneumonia. He made his last public appearance the day before, on Easter Sunday.
Catholic Pope Francis
Born in 1936 in Buenos Argentina as Jorge Mario Bergoglio, he was the first pope from the Society of Jesus (the Jesuit Order), the first from the Americas and the Southern Hemisphere, and the first born or raised outside Europe since the 8th-century. As pope, Francis’s manner was less formal than that of his immediate predecessors, a style that news coverage referred to as “no frills”, noting that it is “his common touch and accessibility that is proving the greatest inspiration”. On the night of his election, he took a bus back to his hotel with the cardinals rather than being driven in the papal car. The next day, he visited Cardinal Jorge María Mejía in the hospital and chatted with patients and staff. Pope Francis could speak three languages fluently: Spanish, Italian, & English.
The United States has over 53 million Catholics members of which 78% thought favorably of Pope Francis!
Francis chose not to live in the official papal residence in the Apostolic Palace but instead remained in the Vatican guest house in a suite in which he received visitors and held meetings. He was the first pope since Pope Pius X to live outside the papal apartments. Francis would appear at the window of the Apostolic Palace for the Sunday Angelus.
As a Jesuit pope, Francis made clear that a fundamental task of the faithful is not so much to follow rules but to discern what God is calling them to do. He altered the culture of the clergy, steering away from what he named “clericalism” (which dwells on priestly status and authority) and toward an ethic of service (Francis says the church’s shepherds must have the “smell of the sheep”, always staying close to the People of God).
Francis created 163 cardinals from 76 countries across ten consistories. He held his first consistory in February 2014, a rare occasion in which he publicly appeared with his predecessor, Benedict XVI. After the 2024 consistory, 110 cardinals appointed by Francis were under the age of 80 and thus eligible to vote at a papal conclave. There were, at that point, 110 cardinal-electors created by Francis, 24 created by Benedict XVI, and six created by John Paul II.
Francis’s appointments made the College of Cardinals less European-dominated.[217] He appointed many cardinals from developing countries, including some of the world’s poorest, and from countries on the peripheries of the church. Article courtesy of Wikipedia!