Pope Francis, committed to service, humility and healing, dead at 88

Pope Francis, whose 12-year papacy ushered in a more open, welcoming Catholic Church that prioritized empathy for the poor and disenfranchised — including Indigenous victims of Canada's church-run residential schools — has died at 88, the Vatican said in a video statement Monday.

"Dear brothers and sisters, it is with profound sadness I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis," Cardinal Kevin Farrell announced on the Vatican's TV channel.

"At 7:35 this morning the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father."

The election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as leader of the Roman Catholic Church on March 13, 2013, came about under remarkable circumstances, after Pope Benedict XVI's surprise resignation.

Francis ushered in a number of firsts for a pope: the first from Latin America, the first from the Jesuit order and the first to take the name Francis.

Francis also made history in the spring of 2022, when he apologized for the "deplorable" conduct of some members of the Catholic Church in Canada's residential school system. A few months later, he said that system had carried out a cultural "genocide."

When Francis appeared on the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica moments after his election, he joked the cardinals "almost went to the ends of the Earth" to find him.

He hailed far from the power centre of the Vatican, born in Buenos Aires on Dec. 17, 1936, the eldest of five children of Italian immigrants.

As a boy, Francis worked in the family grocery store, played soccer and danced the tango. He attended church regularly with his family but was not especially religious until he had a powerful experience during confession as a teen.

In 1969, he was ordained into the priesthood as part of the Jesuits, the Catholic order known for education and missionary work. Four years later, he became head of the Jesuits in Argentina, then archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998. In 2001, he was appointed a cardinal by Pope John Paul II.

As leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Francis was seen as a progressive pontiff, far less concerned about enforcing church doctrine than his predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict, and more interested in opening church doors to those who felt excluded.

From the start, his actions signalled the kind of Catholic Church he desired — "a poor church, for the poor." He shunned the sumptuous Apostolic Palace where previous popes had resided, opting instead to live in the small guest house inside the Vatican walls.

He soon broke with other traditions, moving the Holy Thursday feet-washing ceremony, held three days before Easter Sunday, from a church in Rome to inside prisons — where he became the first pontiff to include women and non-Christians among the inmates whose feet he washed.

In June 2013, three months after becoming Pope, Francis said in response to a reporter's question, "If a person is gay and seeks God and has goodwill, who am I to judge?" He later encouraged same-sex parents to attend mass with their children and called laws that criminalized homosexuality "unjust."