Pope Francis updates: Leader of Roman Catholic Church dies at 88

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Read our step-by-step guide to what happens in next days here.

To know who the potential successors to the pontiff are, check out our explainer here.

You can also read our obituary here to know more about the legacy Pope Francis leaves behind.

We will be closing this live page soon. Here is a recap:

• Pope Francis died at 7:35am [05:35 GMT], the Vatican has announced, without giving the cause of death.
• The 88-year-old had suffered various ailments in his 12-year papacy, including most recently a case of bronchitis that kept him five weeks in hospital.
• Following his discharge last month, the head of the Roman Catholic Church continued to preside over general audiences and made his final public appearance on Easter Sunday.
• Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who oversees Vatican Church affairs, said Francis “taught us to live the values of the gospel with fidelity, courage, and universal love, especially in favour of the poorest and most marginalised”.
• Farrell is due to preside over a rite tonight when the pope’s body will be placed into a casket.
• No date has yet been set for the funeral, but a Vatican spokesman has said Francis’s coffin might be moved to St Peter’s Basilica as early as Wednesday to allow people to pay their respects.
• World leaders have mourned Francis’s passing, with his home country of Argentina declaring a week of national mourning.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, has expressed sorrow over the death of Pope Francis, describing him as a “faithful friend” and “sincere friend of Orthodoxy”.

In a statement published by Greek media on Monday, Istanbul-based Bartholomew stated that Pope Francis has left an example of true humility and brotherly love.

He recalled a meeting in 2014 when they exchanged views in Jerusalem over the Easter festival, discussing the possibility of a common Easter celebration and united brotherly churches.

Francis had hoped they would be healthy enough to undertake a pilgrimage to Nicaea, now Iznik in Turkiye, where the first council of all Christian churches took place 1,700 years ago. According to Bartholomew, the pope said, “And if the Lord does not allow it, then perhaps our successors.”

The Orthodox churches have been independent for almost 1,000 years since the leaders of the Eastern Church in Byzantium and the Western Church in Rome excommunicated each other in 1054.

Yes.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as he was known before becoming Pope Francis, had a brief stint as a nightclub bouncer in Cordoba, Argentina, before becoming a priest.

Born into an Italian immigrant family in Flores, a middle-class district of Buenos Aires, on December 17, 1936, he also worked afternoons in a hosiery factory from the age of 13 while studying to become a chemical technician in the mornings.

The Vatican’s Sistine Chapel chimney released white smoke on March 13, 2013, indicating that a new leader of the Catholic Church had been elected.

Francis succeeded Benedict XVI, who stunned the world on February 11, 2013, when he announced that he no longer had the strength of body and mind to keep up with his obligations.

A papal conclave was held on March 12-13, and on the fifth ballot, its cardinals elected 76-year-old Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires. After accepting his election, he took the name of Francis.

Advocating for migrants has been one of Francis’s priorities as pope.

In February, he blasted the administration of newly elected US President Donald Trump, warning that plans for the mass deportation of migrants would deprive them of their inherent dignity.

He also famously took a swipe at Trump in 2016, saying anyone who builds a wall to keep out migrants was “not a Christian”. In a Mass at the US-Mexico border the same year, he said migrants were our “brothers and sisters”.

His first trip after being elected in 2013 was to the Italian island of Lampedusa, the first port of arrival in Europe for tens of thousands of refugees fleeing persecution, violence and war. While there, the pope mourned the loss of those who die trying to reach Europe and warned that indifference to their plight occurred when “humanity as a whole loses its bearings”.

To draw the world’s attention to their suffering, in 2016, he knelt down to wash the feet of 12 refugees and migrants from six countries. “You, we, are from different religions and cultures, but we are all children of the same Father, and brothers,” he said.

The announcement of Francis’s death by the Vatican did not give a cause of death.

Italian media have speculated that the 88-year-old might have suffered a stroke or brain haemorrhage.

As we’ve been reporting, the pope had contracted double pneumonia this year and was hospitalised in Rome for five weeks.

Doctors had prescribed two months of rest when Francis was discharged nearly a month ago, but he appeared in public on a number of occasions. This month, he met Britain’s King Charles while on Sunday, he was driven around St Peter’s Square in an open-air popemobile to greet cheering crowds on Easter.

Italy’s top-flight football league has postponed all of today’s fixtures after the death of Francis, a lifelong fan of the sport.

The scheduled four matches will now be played on Wednesday.

The country’s Olympic committee has also asked for all of today’s sporting events to be suspended and for the observation of a minute of silence in the competitions scheduled for the rest of the week.

There’s no question there were big differences in terms of how the pope and the Trump administration both viewed the policy of immigration.

In fact, the pope sharply criticised the Trump administration in a letter to bishops in February, essentially saying its policy was not consistent with the welcoming message of the Bible.

Further back, he had also gone on record about Donald Trump’s policies advocating to build a wall along the southern border of the US with Mexico, saying anyone who does that to migrants is not a Christian.

So there have been these strong differences, but Trump has released a statement on Truth Social saying, “Rest in Peace Pope Francis! May God Bless him and all who loved him!”

And at the same time, one of the last people to see the pope was JD Vance, the US vice president, on Sunday. The pope in fact, despite all these differences, even extended three chocolate Easter eggs for the children of the Vance family.

With regards to attending the funeral of the pope, it’s still not clear who will be attending. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has said there are no plans at the moment, but that could change.

Throughout his 12-year papacy, Francis was outspoken on climate change. His papal name was inspired by St Francis of Assisi, who was known to admire and care for the natural world.

In his encyclical Laudato Si (Praised Be), the pope criticised “politics concerned with immediate results, supported by consumerist sectors” and argued that climate change and social justice were intertwined to form “one complex crisis”.

The pontiff also repeatedly urged climate action. “If we took the planet’s temperature, it will tell us that the Earth has a fever and it is sick,” he said before a trip to Southeast Asia last year. “We must commit ourselves to … the protection of nature, changing our personal and community habits.”

His outspokenness on the issue marked a significant increase in Catholic environmental activism. He was also unafraid to criticise world leaders who “deny, conceal, gloss over or relativise the issue”, saying it was no longer possible to deny the human origins of climate change.

Pope Francis declared his desire to be entombed in the Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica in 2023.

Located in the heart of Rome, the fifth-century church already holds the tombs of seven popes. The last pope to be buried there was Clement IX in 1669, while the last pontiff to be buried outside the Vatican was Leo XIII in 1903, whose final resting place is the Church of Saint John Lateran, the cathedral of the bishop of Rome.

Francis was very devoted to the worship of the Virgin Mary and made a point to pray in Santa Maria Maggiore before leaving on trips abroad and upon his return. Most recently, he prayed to the icon of the Virgin Mary inside the basilica on April 12, to mark the beginning of the Holy Week that culminated in Easter.

One of four papal basilicas in Rome, Santa Maria Maggiore holds the remains of several other renowned personalities, such as the architect and sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who designed St Peter’s Square and its surrounding columns.

The interior of Santa Maria Maggiore remains close to its origins. The central nave is lined by 40 Ionic columns and contains exquisite mosaics.

One legend ties the basilica to the Virgin Mary from its origins. It says that a childless wealthy Roman couple wanted to donate their possessions to the Virgin Mary. She appeared to them in a vision and told them to build a church in her honour where a miracle would take place. Snow fell that summer night in August 352 on the hill where the basilica now stands.

Another legend has Pope Liberius being told in a dream of the summer snowfall.

According to the Vatican, however, nothing remains of that original church. Construction of the current basilica began around 432 under Pope Sixtus III.

The basilica holds some of the church’s most important relics, including an icon of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus attributed to Saint Luke. It also holds pieces of wood believed to have been from Jesus’s crib. The basilica’s website says recent studies have dated the wood from the period of Jesus’s birth.

Visitors at the Vatican are expressing deep sorrow for the death of Pope Francis, who is remembered for his peace advocacy and significant reforms of the Roman Curia.

“It’s a great loss; he is a man who has innovated the church and left a great mark,” Rome resident Maria Silvia Tarsia said. “His absence causes great pain.”

Johann Xavier said his family travelled from Australia and was hoping to see the pope. “We heard about [his death] when we came here and it pretty much devastated all of us,” he said.

Becca Tusa said it was “very significant” that the pope died during Easter. Tusa added that for Argentinian nationals like herself, his death “has quite a bit of significance”.

Monica Gonzales, a nun on a trip to the Vatican, said the pontiff’s death was “a great loss for the church and for the whole world”. He was “a pope who worked so hard for peace and for the good of all”, she said.

• Obituary: Pope Francis, pontiff who pushed church boundaries – but didn’t break them
• World reaction: Leaders hail pope’s legacy of compassion and humility
• Explainer: A step-by-step guide to what happens in next days
• Gallery: Pope Francis through the years – a life in pictures
• Video: What happens after a pope dies?

As we’ve been reporting, when a pope dies or steps down, a new pontiff is chosen by the College of Cardinals in a secret ballot vote known as a conclave.

Two-thirds of the men eligible to elect the next pope were named by Francis.

“All these cardinals chosen by Pope Francis have two characteristics,” Loup Besmond de Senneville, the Vatican correspondent for La Croix newspaper, told Al Jazeera.

“The first one is that they come from what Pope Francis called the periphery of the world,” he said, citing cardinals in countries such as Lesotho, Mongolia and Myanmar.

“So in the conclave, you will hear voices that have never been heard before in the Sistine Chapel.”

He added that the second characteristic is that “they all have a very strong pastoral experience; they are all men from the ground, from the field, so it will change the way these men will choose the pope”.

The 88-year-old pontiff was recovering from double pneumonia and was under doctors’ orders to observe two months of convalescence since he left Rome’s Gemelli Hospital on March 23.

Francis suffered from a number of health issues throughout his life, including having part of one of his lungs removed at the age of 21.

He became increasingly fragile in recent years.

Check out our gallery here for some pictures from his life as pope.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said he joins the world “in mourning the passing of His Holiness Pope Francis, a messenger of hope, humility and humanity”.

“Pope Francis was a man of faith for all faiths – working with people of all beliefs and backgrounds to light a path forward,” Guterres said in a statement.

Praising the late pontiff, the United Nations chief said the world body had long drawn inspiration from his “dedication to the organisation’s goals and ideals” – something he personally expressed during their meetings.

“Our divided and discordant world will be a much better place if we follow his example of unity and mutual understanding in our own actions,” Guterres said.

Catholics across Latin America have woken up to the news of the death of Francis, who was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

A number of leaders from across the region have also released statements, including Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum, who said the pontiff was “a humanist who stood for the poor, peace, and equality”.

“He left behind a great legacy of true love for one’s neighbour. For Catholics and non-Catholics alike, this is a great loss. Knowing him was a great honour and privilege. May he rest in peace,” Sheinbaum wrote on her X account.

Uruguay’s President Yamandu Orsi said the pope left “at the moment when the world needed him most”.

“Nevertheless, he always knew how to say what he felt and thought, to whoever would listen. A man of faith and commitment. Pope Francis left a clear mark, a path to follow,” Orsi said.

Bolivian President Luis Arce said Pope Francis was not only the leader of the Catholic Church, but also a “staunch friend of the Great Homeland and a fervent defender of the most vulnerable.”

“His encyclical Laudato Si [Praised be] is a fundamental legacy for thinking and reflecting on our Mother Earth, the climate crisis, and other ills that afflict us due to the predatory capitalist system.”

As we’ve reported, the US vice president yesterday met briefly with Pope Francis to exchange Easter greetings.

The meeting took place in the Domus Sanctae Marthae (Saint Martha’s House) where the pope had been living since his discharge from hospital.

Video footage showed Francis in his wheelchair shaking hands with JD Vance, with the Vatican writing later in a brief statement that the meeting “gave the opportunity to exchange greetings on Easter Sunday”.

Francis gave Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, three big chocolate Easter eggs to give to his three young children.

“I know you have not been feeling great but, it’s good to see you in better health,” Vance told the pope. “Thank you for seeing me.”

The encounter came after the two got into a long-distance spat over the Trump administration’s migrant deportation plans.

Earlier today, Vance wrote on X: “I just learned of the passing of Pope Francis. My heart goes out to the millions of Christians all over the world who loved him.

“I was happy to see him yesterday, though he was obviously very ill. But I’ll always remember him for the below homily he gave in the very early days of COVID. It was really quite beautiful.

“May God rest his soul.”

I just learned of the passing of Pope Francis. My heart goes out to the millions of Christians all over the world who loved him.

I was happy to see him yesterday, though he was obviously very ill. But I’ll always remember him for the below homily he gave in the very early days…

— JD Vance (@JDVance) April 21, 2025