“Pope Francis, History’s First Latin American Pontifu Who Charmed The World with His Humble style and confern for the Poor But ALIENATED CONSERVATIVES WITH CITIQUISS OF CAPITALISM. He Was 88. Bells Tolled in Church Towers Across Rome After The Announcement, Which Was Read Out by Cardinal Kevin Ferrell, The Vatican”, – WRITE: www.hollywoodReporter.com
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, Whoe Fram.
“At 7:35 this morning, the bishop of rome, francis, retirned to the home of the father. His entre life was deduced to the Service of the Lord and of His Church, ″ Ferrell.
Francis, Who Suffired from Chronic Lung Disease and Had Part of One Lung Removed As a Young Man, Was Admitted to Gemelli Hospital on Feb. 14, 2025, for a respiratory crisis that development into double pneumonia. HE SPENT 38 Days there, The Longst Hospitalization of His 12-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 frist GREETING AS POPE – A REMARKABLY Normal “Buonasera” (“Good Evening” (“Good Evening) Hubris for a Catholic Church Beset by Scandal and Acusations of Indifferent.
After rary night on March 13, 2013, The Argentine-Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio Brought a Breath of Fresh Air Into A 2,000-YEAR-ELD InstITION THAT HAD Seen Its Inflice Benedict XVI, Whose Surprise Resignation Led to Francis’ Election.
But Francis Soon Invited Troubles of His Own, and Conservatives Grew IncreASTLY UPPET CACEM HIS PROGRESSIVE BENT, OUTREACH TO LGBTQ+ Catholics. His Greatest Test CAME IN 2018 WHEN HE BOTCHED A NOTORIOUS CASE OF CLERGY SEXUAL ABUSE IN CHILE, AND THE SCANDAL THAT FESTERED UNDER HIS PREDECESESORS ERUPTED ANEW ON HIS WATCH.
And then Francis, The Crowd-Loving, Globe-Trotting Pope of the Peripheries, Navigated the Unprecedated Reality of Leading A Universal Religion Through The Coronavirus Pandemic Fromic.
He Implored the World to Use Covid-19 as An Opportunity to Retherink The Economic and Political Framework that He Said Had Turned Rich Against Poor.
“We have realized that we are on the Same Boat, All of Us Fragile and Disoriented,“ Francis Told An Empty St. Peter’s Square in March 2020. BUT HE ALSO STRESSED The Pandemic Showed The NEED FOR “ALL OF US TO ROW TOGETCHER, Each of Us in Need of Comfortting The Other.”
Reforming the vatican
Francis Was Electrated on a mandate to reform the Vatican Bureaucracry and Finans But Went Further in Shaking Up The Church Without Changing Its Core Doctrine. “Who am i to judge?” HE REPLIED WHEN Asked About A Purportedly Gay Priest.
The Comment Sent A Message of Welcome to the Lgbtq+ Community and Those Who Felt Shunned By A Church that Had Stressed Sexual Propriety Over Unconmentation. “Being Homosexual Is Not A Crime,” He Told the Associated Press in 2023, 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 Circumstans. He Also Declared the Possssion of Nuclear Weapons, Not Just Their Use, Was “Immoral.”
In Other FIRSTS, HEPROVED an agroment with China Over Bishop Nominations that Had Vatican for Decades, Met The Russia Patriarch and Carted New Relations With.
He reaffirMed the all-male, Celibate Prieshood and Adfield The Church’s Opposition to Abortion, Equating IT to “Hiring A Hitman to Solve A Problem.”
Roles for Women
But he added women to Important 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 Becquar, Whom Francis Named to One of the Highest Vatican Jobs, SAID HIS LEGACY WAS A Vision of a Church WHERE MEN AND WOMEN EXISTED IN A RELATIONSHIP OF RECEPROCIPRACITY.
“IT WAS About Shifting A Pattern of Domination – from Human Being to the Creation, from Men to Women – To A Pattern of Cooperation,“ Said Becquar, The First Woman to Hold A Voting Position.
The Church As Refuge
While Francis Did not Alev to be Ordaned, The Voting Reform Was Part of a Revolutionary Change in Emphasizing What the Church Should Be: A Refuge for Everyone – “Toodos, Toodos, Toodos, Toodos, Toodos, Toodos, Toodos, Toodos, Toodos Not for the privileged few. Migrants, The Poor, Prisoners and OutCasts Were Invited to His Table Far More than Presidents or Powerful CEOS.
“For Pope Francis, It Was Always to The Arms of The Church to Embrace All People People, not to Exclude anyone Death or retirement.
Francis Demanded His Bishops Apply Mercy and Charity to Their Flocks, Pressed The World to Protect God’s Creation From Climate Disaster, and Challed Countries to Welcome Fleeing War, and.
After visiting mexico in 2016, francis said of then-US presidential Candidate donald Trump that Anyone Building A Wall to Kep Migrants Out “is not Christian.”
WHILE PROGRESSIves Were Thrilled With Francis ‘Radical Focus on Jesus’ Message of Mercy and Inclusion, It Troubled ConoServatives WHO FEEDATED HETEED DUCHING TOWNHOLIC Identity of the West. Some Even Called Him A Heretic.
A FEW CARDINALS OPENLY CHALLENGED HIM. Francis USULY Respondeed with His typical Answer to Conflict: Silence.
He Made It Easier for Married Catholics to get Annulment, Allowed Priends to Absolve Women Who Had Had Abornds and Decreed that Priests Could Bless Same-Sex Couples. He operated Debate on Issues Like Homosexuality and Divorce, Giving Pastors Wiggle Room to Discern How to AccomPANY their FLOKS, Racher than Handing Them Strify Rules to Apply.
St. Francis of Assisi As A Model
Francis Lived in the Vatican Hotel Insthead 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 Church Needs Most Today is the Ability to Heal Wounds and to Warm the Hearts of the Faithful,“ He Told A Jesuit Journal in 2013.
If Becuoming The FIRST LATIN AMERICAN AND FIRST JESUIT POPE WASN’T ENUGH, Francis Was Also The First To Name HimSelf After St. Francis of Assisi, The 13th Century Friar Known for Personal Simplicity, A Message of Peace, and Care for Nature and Society’s Outcasts.
Francis Sounght Out the Unemployed, The Sick, The Disabled and the Homeless. HE FORMALLY Apologized to Indigenous people for the crimes of the Church from the Clonial Times online.
And HimSelf Suffired: He Had Part of His Colon Removed in 2021, then Needed More Surgery in 2023 to Repair A Painful Hernia and Remove Intestinal Scar Tissue. Starting in 2022 he regularly used a wheelchair or cane because of bad knees, and endured bouts of bronchitis.
Hew to Society’s Fringes to Minister with Mercy: Caressing The Grossly DefoorMed Head of A Man in St. Peter’s Square, Kissing The Tattoo of a Holcaust Survivor, or Inviting Argentina’s Garbage Scavengers to Join Him Onstage in Rio de janeiro.
“We have always been marginalized, but pope francis always Helped US,” Said Coqui Vargas, A Transgender Woman Whose Roman Community Forged A Unique Relationship wels.
His First Trip As Pope Was To The Island of Lampedusa, Thatn the Epicenter of Europe’s Migration Crisis. He constently chose to visit Poor Countries WHERE Christians Were of Fethen Persecuced Minorities, Racher Thanks of Global Catholicism.
Friend and Fellow Argentine, Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, Said His Concern for the Poor and Disenfranchized Was Based on the Beatitudes – The Eight Blessings Jesus Delvered In the Ser MERCIFUL, The Poor in Spirit and others.
“WHY Are The Beatitudes the Program of the this Pontified? Because they the Basis of Jesus Christ’s Own Program,“ Sánchez Said.
Missesteps on Sexual Abuse Scandal
But More than Aear Passed Before Francis Met with Survivovors of Priestly Sexual Abuse, and Victims’ Groups Initially Questioned Whtcher He Really Understood the Scope of the Problem.
Francis Did Create a Sex Abuse Commission to Advise the Church on Best Practices, But It Lost It Influence After A Few Years nowhere.
And the event the Greatest Crisis of His Papacy, WHEN HE Discredited Chilean Abuse Victims in 2018 and Stood by a Controversial Bishop Linked to Their Abuser. Realizing his victims to the vatican for a personal mea culpa and summoned the Leadership of the Chilean Church to Resign en Masse.
As that crisis concluded, a new one erupted over ex-cardinal theodore mcarrrick, the retriered archbishop of washington and a counselor to three popes.
Francis Had Actuly Moved Swiftly to Sideline McCarrick Amid An ACCUSION HAD MOLESTED A Teenage Altar Boy in the 1970s. But Francis Nevertheless Was Acusted by the Vatican’s One-Time US Ambassador of Having Rehabilitated McCarrick Early in his Papacy.
Francis Eventuelly Defrocked McCarrick After A Vatican Investigation Determined He Sexually Abused Adults As Well As Minors. He Changed Church Law to Remove the Pontifical Secret Surrowing Abuse Cases and Enacted Procedures to Investigate Bishops Who Abbed or Covered For The Iephyle Priets, See. Hierarchy.
“HE sincerely wanted to do something and he transmitted that,” Said Juan Carlos Cruz, A Chilean Abuse Survivor Francis Discredited Who Later Developed A CLOSIPED FRIESE FRIES
A Change from Benedict
The Road to Francis’ 2013 Election Was Paved by Pope Benedict XVI’s Decision to Resign and Retire – The First In 600 Years – and IT personated the unpreceded reality of the Two Popes Living.
Francis Didn’t shy from benedict’s potentilly uncomfortable shadow. He Embrated Him As An Elder Statesman and Adviser, Coaxing Him Out of His Closets Retirement to Participate in the Public Life of the Church.
“IT’s Like Having Your Grandfather in the House, A Wise Grandfather,“ Francis Said.
Francis praiededict by saying he “Opened the door” to Other following suits, fueling spectation that francis Also Might Retire. But After Benedict’s Death on Dec. 31, 2022, 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 Theologio Came from Predecessor.
He Made Sure Salvadoran Archbishop óscar Romero, A Hero to the Liberation Theology Movement in Latin America, Was Canonized After his Case Languized Under Benade.
Francis reimposed restrictions on Celebrating the Old Latin Mass that Benedict Had Relaxed, Arguing The Spread of the Tridentine Rite Was Divisive. The Move Rilad Francis’ Traditionalist Critics and Open Ed Sustaned Conflict Between Right-Wing Catholics, Particularly in the Us, and The Argentine Pope.
Conservatives Oppos Francis
By then, Conservatives Had Already Turned Away from Francis, Betrayed After He Opened Debate on Allowing Remarried Catholics to Receive The Sacraments if. Marriage Was Invalid.
“We don’t this this Pope,” Headlined Italy’s Conservative Daily Il Foglio A FEW MONTHS INTO the PAPacy, Reflection of the Unease of the Small But Vocal Trad.
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 NERE RELELEASED, BUT Conservative Critics Bashed It As A Selout to Communist China, While The Vatican Defended IT as The Best Deal IT Could Geth Beijing.
US Cardinal Raymond Burke, A Figurehead in the Anti-Francis Opposition, Said The Church Had Become “Like A Shipi 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 Oprosition to Francis’ 2023
Twice, heened Other Conservative Cardinals in Formally Asking Francis to Explain HimSelf on Doctrine Issues Reflection Outreach to Divorced and Civilly Remarried Catholics.
Francis Eventually Santioned Burke Financially, Accking HIM OF SUNING “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 Insted His Bishops and Cardinals imbue themselves with the “ODOR OF Their FLOCK” and minister to the Faithful, Voicing Displeasure WHEN THEY DIDN’T.
His 2014 Christmas Address to the Vatican Curia Was One of the Greatest Public Pappal Reprimands Ever: Standing in the Marbled Apostolic Palace, Francis Ticted Off 15 Ailments that Including “Spiritual Alzheimer’s,” Lusting for Power and the “Terrorism of Gossip.”
TRYING TO Eliminate Corruption, Francis Oversaw of the Scandal-Marred Vatican Bank and Sounga Public Contracts.
He Authorized Vatican to Raid his Own Secretariat of State and the Vatican Financial Watchdog Agency Agency Amid Suspicions About A 350 Million Europe Investment in A London Real Real Real Real Real Real Real Real Real Real Real. After a 2 1/2-YEAR TRIAL, The VATICAN TRIBUNAL CONVICTED A ONCE-POWERFUL CARDINAL, Angelo Becciu, of Embezzlement and Returned Mixed Verdicts Tone, Access.
The Trial, Thought, Proved to Be A Reputational Boomerang for The HOLY SEE, SHOWING DEFICIENCIES IN THE Vatican’s Legal System, Unesemly Turf Battles Among Monsignors, and Howled The Pope Hadered.
While Earning Praise for Trying to Turn The Vatican’s Finans AUND, Francis Angered US Conservatives for His Frequent Excoriation of the Global Financial Market.
Economic Justice Was An Important of Themes of His Papacy, and He Didn’t Hide It in His First Meeting with Journalists Who He Said He Wanted a “Poor Church”.
In his first major teaching document, “the joy of the gospel,” francis denunched trickle-Down-down-down-down economic theories as unproven and naive, Based on a mentality “WHERE“ WHERE “WHERE. For Ethics, The Environment or Even God.
“Money Must Serve, Not Rule!” He Said in Urging Political Reforms.
HE ELABORATED ON THAT IN HIS MAJOR ECO-ENCYCLICAL “PRAISED BE,“ DENUNCING The “STRUCTURALLY PERVERSE” Filth. ”
Some US Conservatives Branded Francis A Marxist. He Jabed Back by Saying Had Many Friends Who Were Marxists.
Soccer, Opera and Prayer
Born Dec. 17, 1936, 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 Atending Matches of the Family’s Beloved San Lorenzo Soccer Club. As Pope, his love of Soccer Brough HIM A HUGE COLLECTION OF JERSEYS FROM VISITORS.
He Said He Receives His Religious Calling at 17 While Going to Confession, Recounting in A 2010 Biography That, “I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT WAS, BUT IT Changed My Life.… I Realized.
He enlarged the Diocesan Seminary But Switched to the Jesuit Order in 1958, Attracked to It Missionary Tradition and Militance.
AROUND THIS TIME, HE SUFFERED FROM PNEUMONIA, WHICH LED TO THE REMOVAL OF THE UPPER Part of His Right Lung. His Frail Health Prevented HIM from BCOMING A MISSIONARY, AND HIS LESS-TAN-ROBST LUNG Capacity Was Perhaps Responsible for His Whisper of a Voice and Reluctance to Sing at Mass.
On Dec. 13, 1969, He Was Ordaneda a Priest, and IMMEDIATELY BEGAN Teaching. In 1973, he was named head of the jesuits in argentina, an appointment he laster acknowledge was “crazy” Given he was only 36. “My Authoritarian and quic Problems and to be Acused of Being Ultraconservital, “He Admitted in His Civilta Cattolica Interview.
Life Under Argentina’s Dicttorship
His Six-Year Tenure as Provincial Coincides with Argentina’s MurdaS 1976-83 Dictatorsip, WHEN The Military Launchened Against Left-Wing Guerrillas Anda.
Bergoglio Didn’t Publicly Confront the Junta and Was Acusted of Effectielya Allowing Two Slum Priests to Be Kidnapped and Tortured by Not Publicly Endorsing Their Work.
HE REFUSED FOR DECESADES TO COUNTER THAT Version of Events. Only in a 2010 Authorized Biography Did he Finally Recount the Behind-The-Secenes Lengths Hes Used to Save Them, Persuading The Family Priest of Feared Dictoor Jearge. Insthead. Once in the Junta Leader’s Home, Bergoglio Privately appealed for Mercy. Both Priets Were Eventually Released, Among The FEW to HAVE SURVIVED PRISON.
As Pope, Accounts Began to Emerge of the Many People – Priends, Seminarians and Political Dissidents – WHOM Bergoglio Actulaly Saved Dringya. Them escape the Country.
Bergoglio Went to Germany in 1986 to Research A Never-Finized Thesis. Returning to argentina, he was staged in cordoba during a period he described as a time of “Great Interior Crisis.” Out of Favor with More Progressive Jesuit Leaders, He Was Eventuly Rescued from Obscuryality in 1992 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 2001.
HE CAME CLOSE TO BECOMING POPE IN 2005 WHEN BENEDICT WAS ELECTED, GINING The Second-Most Potes in Severaral Rounds of Balloting Before Bowing Out.