Pope Francis, who was the first Latin American pontiff in history, who captivated the world with his humble style and concern for the poor while discomforting the conservative sector with his criticisms of capitalism and climate change, died on Monday at the age of 88.
These are the key events in the life of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who became Pope Francis and passed away on Monday.
Key moments in the life of Pope Francis
- December 17, 1936: Jorge Mario Bergoglio is born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the eldest of five children of Mario José Bergoglio, an accountant from Italy, and Regina María Sívori, daughter of Italian immigrants.
- December 13, 1969: He is ordained as a priest with the Jesuit religious order, which he would lead as the provincial superior of Argentina during the dictatorship of the country that began in the 1970s.
- February 21, 2001: Elevated to cardinal by St. John Paul II.
- March 13, 2013: Chosen as the 266th pope, the first from America, the first Jesuit, and the first to take the name Francis, in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi.
- May 12, 2013: Canonizes the “martyrs of Otranto,” 813 Italians killed in 1480 for defying the demands of the Turkish invaders to convert to Islam. With a single ceremony, Francis almost doubled the 480 saints canonized by John Paul II.
- July 8, 2013: He makes his first trip outside of Rome to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa to meet with newly arrived migrants and denounces the “globalization of indifference” shown towards asylum seekers.
- July 30, 2013: Declares “Who am I to judge?” when asked about a gay priest during a press conference, indicating a more welcoming stance towards the LGBTQ+ community.
- May 25, 2014: Makes an unscheduled stop to pray at the wall separating Israel from the West Bank city of Bethlehem, in a show of support for the Palestinian cause. Weeks later, he hosted the Israeli and Palestinian presidents for prayers for peace in the Vatican gardens.
- March 20, 2015: Accepts the resignation of the “rights and privileges” of Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien after adult men accused him of inappropriate sexual behavior.
- July 10, 2015: Apologizes in Bolivia for the sins and crimes of the Catholic Church against indigenous peoples during the colonial conquest of America.
- February 12, 2016: He meets with the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Cyril during a stop in Havana and declares “we are brothers,” in the first meeting of this kind between a pope and a patriarch in over 1,000 years.
- February 18, 2016: Pray for the migrants who died at the border between the United States and Mexico, and then says that the then presidential candidate Donald Trump is “not Christian” for wanting to build a border wall.
- April 8, 2016: Opens the way to allow divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive communion in a footnote to the document “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”).
- January 19, 2018: Accuses sexual abuse victims of slander during a visit to Chile, further undermining the credibility of the Catholic Church. Later orders a Vatican investigation into the abuse crisis in Chile.
- April 12, 2018: Admits “serious errors” in judgment in the sexual abuse scandal in Chile. Then calls on Chilean bishops to Rome to secure their resignations and invites abuse victims to the Vatican to apologize.
- October 14, 2018: Canonizes the murdered Salvadoran archbishop Óscar Romero after his process of sanctification was delayed for decades by conservative cardinals.
- February 4, 2019: Signs the document “Human Fraternity” with the Imam of Al Azhar, establishing collaborative relationships between Catholics and Muslims.
- February 16, 2019: Theodore McCarrick is reduced to the lay state after a Vatican investigation finds that he sexually abused minors and adults.
- October 4, 2020: Issues the encyclical “Fratelli Tutti” (“Brothers All”), arguing that the pandemic demonstrates that market capitalism theories have failed and a new type of politics is needed to promote human fraternity.
- March 5-8, 2021: He becomes the first pope to visit Iraq, meeting with its top Shiite Muslim cleric.
- January 5, 2023: He presides over the funeral mass of Pope Benedict XVI.
- January 24, 2023: Declares in an interview with the Associated Press that “being homosexual is not a crime.”
- December 16, 2023: A Vatican court sentences Cardinal Angelo Becciu to five and a half years in prison for embezzlement in one of several verdicts in a complex financial trial that exposed the dirty laundry of the city-state and tested its justice system.
- December 19, 2023: Approves blessings for same-sex couples as long as they do not resemble marriage, triggering fierce opposition from conservative bishops in Africa, Asia, and other places.
- July 5, 2024: The Vatican excommunicates the main critic of Francis, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, for schism.
- January 16, 2025: He appears with a sling after a fall that left him with a bruise on his right arm, just a few weeks after another apparent fall left him with a bruise on his chin.
- February 14, 2025: He is hospitalized after a bronchitis attack worsens and then develops into a complex lung infection and bilateral pneumonia.
- March 23, 2025: He is discharged from the hospital after 38 days of treatment, but he looks weak and fragile that same day when he appears on a balcony to greet the crowd below.
- April 17, 2025: Still recovering from bilateral pneumonia, Francis maintains his tradition of Holy Thursday by spending time with the less fortunate, visiting inmates at the Regina Caeli prison in Rome. Although he says he was unable to perform the ritual of washing the feet of 12 people as a gesture of humility, he adds that he wanted to be with them and “do what Jesus did on Holy Thursday.”