At precisely 9:45 a.m. on Monday, 24 March 2025, Cardinal Kevin Farrell—Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church and thus the official responsible for the temporal administration of the Apostolic See during a sede vacante—stepped onto the small dais in the press‑briefing hall of the Casa Santa Marta. His voice, though resolutely composed, carried the unmistakable timbre of grief as he read a short communiqué that immediately rippled around the world:
“Dearest brothers and sisters, with deep sorrow I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis. At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and of His Church. He taught us to live the values of the Gospel with fidelity, courage, and universal love, especially in favor of the poorest and most marginalized. With immense gratitude for his example as a true disciple of the Lord Jesus, we commend the soul of Pope Francis to the infinite merciful love of the One and Triune God.”
With those measured sentences the Catholic Church—and indeed much of the wider world—entered a period of mourning for the first Latin‑American pope, the Argentine Jesuit who for twelve transformative years had occupied the Chair of Peter.
The news, although not entirely unexpected given the Holy Father’s well‑publicised decline in health, nonetheless landed with the weight of history: as of that spring morning the papacy of Jorge Mario Bergoglio had become a matter for the annals, his stewardship of 1.3 billion Catholics now entrusted to memory, magisterial documents, and the vivid witness of those who had encountered him.
A Long‑Standing Respiratory Vulnerability
The immediate cause of death, according to the concise medical bulletin released by the Vatican Press Office an hour after Cardinal Farrell’s statement, was “a fulminant cardiopulmonary collapse secondary to bilateral pneumonia.” The Holy Father had first been brought to Rome’s Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic on Friday, 14 February 2025, suffering from a stubborn bout of bronchitis that refused to yield to ordinary outpatient therapy.
Initial optimism among clinicians that his condition would stabilise faded over the next several days as inflammatory markers rose and oxygen saturation fell. By Tuesday, 18 February, diagnostic imaging confirmed a double‑sided pneumonia, a perilous development for any octogenarian but especially for a man who, nearly seven decades earlier, had lost most of the upper lobe of his right lung.
That youthful surgery, performed in 1957 when the future pontiff was a 20‑year‑old chemistry student and fledgling Jesuit novice in Buenos Aires, left behind scar tissue that rendered subsequent respiratory infections more dangerous. Over the course of his papacy he often spoke matter‑of‑factly about the episode, recalling his weeks in recovery and the period of vocational discernment it occasioned. “It taught me to trust entirely in God,” he once told journalists on an in‑flight press conference, “because I realised how quickly a person’s plans can be interrupted.”
In later life those vulnerabilities manifested in recurrent chest infections. A planned apostolic journey to Dubai for the first global Faith & Sustainability Summit in November 2023 had to be cancelled with less than a week’s notice after doctors diagnosed influenza complicated by “lung inflammation.”
Even so, the pope’s penchant for a demanding schedule—early morning Mass, meetings with heads of state, marathon synodal sessions, and off‑the‑cuff encounters with pilgrims—persisted. “He governs with his feet rather than from a throne,” a longtime aide quipped, “but the feet and lungs aren’t always in the same league.”
A Return to Santa Marta, and a Final Decline
After thirty‑eight days of intensive treatment at Gemelli, including several non‑invasive ventilation periods, Pope Francis expressed a strong desire to spend whatever convalescence remained within the familiar, modest confines of the Casa Santa Marta guesthouse—his chosen residence since the night of his election on 13 March 2013. The medical team, seeking to honour that pastoral preference while maintaining continuity of care, installed portable monitoring equipment and arranged for round‑the‑clock nursing.
For a brief interlude in early March it seemed that the pontiff’s trademark resilience might yet prevail; visitors reported him conversing amiably, leafing through drafts of upcoming apostolic letters, and even joking about “getting back into the field” for the anticipated Jubilee Year 2025.
Then, during the night of 22 March, his oxygen needs spiked. By dawn on the 23rd he was largely confined to bed, conscious but increasingly fatigued. The sedative‑assisted sleep in which he died the next morning thus came, physicians say, without acute struggle—a serene close to a life habitually punctuated by physical limitation but spiritually expansive.
The Liturgical Blueprint for a Simple Pope
While his passing set in motion well‑rehearsed canonical procedures—a sealed Apostolic Palace, the ringing of the Campanone bell, the affixing of lead seals on papal apartments—it also activated an updated set of funeral norms that Pope Francis himself had quietly approved in April 2024. Officially titled Ordo Exsequiarum Romani Pontificis, Editio II, the new book reflects his long‑standing wish for simplicity, transparency, and a more explicitly evangelical tone in the rites surrounding a pontiff’s death.
One of the most striking changes concerns the immediate handling of the body. Under the earlier 2005 edition the confirmation of death and the initial prayers customarily took place in the deceased pontiff’s bedroom. Francis altered that, stipulating that the confirmatio mortis be carried out in the nearest chapel “so that the first gestures are already oriented toward liturgical praise rather than private sorrow.”
Accordingly, shortly after the medical team’s formal certification at 7:35 a.m., papal aides transferred his remains to the small chapel on the first floor of Santa Marta, where Cardinal Farrell led the ancient “Subveníte” chant—“Come to his aid, O saints of God, come to meet him, angels of the Lord.” Immediately thereafter the body was placed into the cypress coffin that will serve as the innermost of the traditional three coffins.
Archbishop Diego Ravelli, Master of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations, emphasised the spiritual rationale behind the revisions. “The renewed rite,” he told Vatican News, “seeks to underline that the funeral of the Roman Pontiff is first a Paschal proclamation: the pastor who led Christ’s flock now follows the Lamb who was slain. It is therefore not an occasion to exalt worldly power, but to confess Christian hope.”
A Life of Firsts and of Bridges
That pastoral mindset had characterised virtually every chapter of Bergoglio’s biography. Born on 17 December 1936 in Buenos Aires to Italian immigrant parents, he joined the Society of Jesus in 1958, was ordained a priest in 1969, named auxiliary bishop of the Argentine capital in 1992, and created a cardinal by Saint John Paul II in 2001. As archbishop he rode public buses, cooked his own meals, and inaugurated night‑time visits to city slums—gestures that signalled both authenticity and a confrontation with structural poverty.
Upon his election as pope—the first Jesuit, the first from the global South, and the first to take the name “Francis” after the poverello of Assisi—he promptly chose to dispense with the papal apartments in favour of Santa Marta’s modest suite 201. He retained his own black shoes instead of adopting the customarily red papal loafers and famously carried a battered briefcase onto airplanes, remarking, “Inside is my razor and my agenda, nothing exotic.”
Yet his simplicity belied an ambitious reform agenda. He convened the Council of Cardinals (the so‑called C9, later C6 and then C8) to advise on governance, overhauled the troubled Vatican finances by inaugurating the Secretariat for the Economy, issued Laudato Si’—the first encyclical devoted entirely to ecological ethics—and launched the most inclusive synodal process in modern Catholic history, culminating in the 2023–2024 Synod on Synodality. Whether urging Europe to welcome migrants, challenging the fossil‑fuel industry, or washing the feet of Muslim prisoners on Holy Thursday, he provoked admiration and disquiet in equal measure. His off‑the‑cuff remarks—“Who am I to judge?” chief among them—echoed far beyond ecclesial circles, setting new expectations for papal candour.
The Camerlengo’s Immediate Tasks
Now, as Camerlengo, Cardinal Farrell must shepherd the Church through a sequence of interlocking responsibilities: verifying and sealing the papal offices, destroying the Fisherman’s Ring and lead seal to prevent counterfeiting, and convening the College of Cardinals for daily congregationes generales (general meetings). Within fifteen to eighteen days of the pope’s death, the cardinals under the age of eighty—projected to number 130—will enter the Sistine Chapel for the Conclave. There, beneath Michelangelo’s Giudizio Universale, they will cast ballots until one of their number receives a two‑thirds majority and emerges as the 267th Successor of Peter.
In the meantime Rome is bracing for an influx of dignitaries, pilgrims, and media. Early estimates from the Prefecture of the Papal Household suggest that as many as two million people could file past the pope’s bier during the three days of public viewing in St Peter’s Basilica. Governments from Latin America to East Asia have already begun dispatching delegations. For Argentines the moment carries singular poignancy: Buenos Aires has declared three days of national mourning, and cathedral bells across the sprawling Villa Miseria neighbourhoods tolled in unison when the news reached them.
A Funeral Focused on Hope
Although precise details will emerge only after the congregationes approve the timetable, Archbishop Ravelli has confirmed that the funeral Mass will be celebrated in St Peter’s Square, presided over by the Dean of the College of Cardinals, currently Cardinal Jean‑Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg. Echoing Francis’ instructions, the liturgy will omit certain elements of courtly precedent: no formal “funeral eulogy,” no military honours other than the minimal presence of the Swiss Guard, and simplified vesture for concelebrating bishops. Instead, scripture readings will highlight passages on mercy and missionary discipleship—a thematic through‑line of the late pope’s teaching papers, from Evangelii Gaudium (2013) to Laudate Deum (2024).
The Holy Father’s remains will be interred in the crypt beneath St Peter’s Basilica, in the same vaulted corridor where Popes John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul II first rested before later transfers. In keeping with his personal request, there will be no elaborate sarcophagus; a simple travertine slab, engraved “Franciscus PP.,” will suffice. Behind that modest marker pilgrims will surely gather for decades, lighting candles and whispering prayers in the polyglot cadence that Francis once described as “a Pentecost without end.”
A Legacy Still Unfolding
Assessments of a papal legacy begin the moment the Apostolic Palace doors close and often evolve for generations. For many observers Francis will be remembered as the pope of the peripheries, the pastor who insisted that shepherds must “smell like the sheep.” For others he will stand as the reformer of a cumbersome Curia, the ecological prophet, or the daring diplomat who helped broker the 2014 thaw between the United States and Cuba. Critics will no doubt scrutinise unresolved questions—women’s governance roles, clerical sexual abuse accountability, the implementation of Traditionis Custodes—but even detractors rarely dispute his sincerity or his relentless invitation to what he called “the culture of encounter.”
In one of his final Sunday Angelus addresses, delivered from a wheelchair yet with unmistakable fervour, Francis urged the faithful not to lose heart in the face of global polarisation. “Hope,” he said, “is not naive optimism; it is the stubborn conviction that God continues to write straight with crooked lines.” Now, as the College of Cardinals prepares to discern the next successor of Peter, that conviction becomes the spiritual compass for a Church navigating both sorrow and expectation.
Cardinal Farrell concluded his morning announcement with a brief prayer, tracing the sign of the cross before leaving the podium. Cameras clicked, reporters hastened to file their stories, and the bells of St Peter’s resumed their solemn toll. By nightfall thousands had already congregated in the square, many clutching small candles, others simply standing in contemplative silence beneath Bernini’s colonnades. In that flickering vigil, the contours of a new chapter began to emerge, even as the pages of the old one were reverently closed.
The Church now awaits—grieving, grateful, and, as Francis himself would insist, ever rooted in the joy of the Gospel.
