Pope Francis has died at the age of 88

Pope Francis has died at the age of 88, the Vatican has announced.

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected to lead the Catholic Church in March 2013 after Pope Benedict XVI stood down.

Vatican statementpublished

Pope Francis died on Easter Monday, 21 April 2025, at the age of 88 at his residence in the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta building.

Pope Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 17 December 1936.

The eldest of five children, his parents had fled their native Italy to escape the evils of fascism. 

He enjoyed tango dancing and became a supporter of his local football club, San Lorenzo.

He was lucky to escape with his life after a serious bout of pneumonia, undergoing an operation to remove part of a lung. It would leave him susceptible to infection throughout his life.

As an elderly man he also suffered from pain in his right knee, which he described as a “physical humiliation”.

The young Bergoglio worked as a nightclub bouncer and floor sweeper, before graduating as a chemist.

At a local factory, he worked closely with Esther Ballestrino, who had campaigned against Argentina’s military dictatorship. She was tortured, and her body was never found.

He became a Jesuit, studied philosophy and taught literature and psychology. Ordained a decade later, he won swift promotion, becoming the Catholic Church’s provincial superior for Argentina in 1973.

The visit of Pope Francis in Morocco coincides with the 800th anniversary of the encounter between St. Francis of Assisi and the Sultan al-Malik al-K’mall, who initiated the desire for dialogue and the establishment of harmonious relations between Catholicism and Islam. Another symbol that the Church in Morocco is drawing with this visit is that it coincides with the Jubilee of the 800 years of Franciscan presence in Morocco (1219 – 2019).

At the invitation of the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI and the Bishops of Morocco, Cristóbal López Romero, Archbishop of Rabat, and the Archbishop of Tangier, Santiago Agrelo Martínez, Pope is currently in Rabat for a weekend visit.

St Francis of Assisi encounters Sultan al-Malik al-K’mall

Eight hundred years ago, St. Francis of Assisi and his companion, Illuminatus, who it is said could speak ‘some’ Arabic set out to meet the Muslim Sultan al-Malik al-K’mall. He was the Sultan of Palestine, Syria, and Egypt:

Sultan al-Malik al-K’mall was a devout Muslim could have had St Francis of Assisi killed for trying to convert him. The Sultan spared the life of St Francis. It is not exactly known what St. Francis and the Sultan al-Malik al-K’mall discussed, but historians say Francis returned home a changed man and impressed about his experience with the Sultan. 

The Catholic Church in Morocco has a long and ancient history

In a media briefing about the visit of Pope Francis to Rabat, Père Daniel Nourissat of the Archdiocese of Rabat, says the presence of Christianity in North Africa goes back to the end of the Second Century. There are ancient traces of Christianity, before the arrival of Islam, in places such as Tangier and others. After the establishment of Islam in the Maghreb, small Christian communities survived until the thirteenth century, in some areas, despite the gradual disappearance of the ecclesiastic hierarchy.

In 1219, during St. Francis of Assisi’s very lifetime, the first Franciscans entered Morocco, at the Sultan of Marrakech’s request, to ensure his captives’ would continue to have the freedom of worship. In 1225, the Holy See appointed for the territories under Almohad ’s dominion, a Dominican Bishop. From the fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century, Spanish missionaries continued to exercise their apostolate among Christian captives.

In 1955 there were 200 Christian Churches in Morocco

Following the rapid expansion of the Catholic Church, in 1923 Pope Pius XI created two Apostolic Vicariates: One in Rabat, for the French Protectorate zone, and another in Tangier, for the Spanish Protectorate zone and the Tangier international zone. Resident General  Hubert Lyautey, a French Army general and colonial administrator, made sure that the Church respected Morocco’s “protectorate” status and did not seek to make Muslims become Christians.

In 1955, there were 200 Christian Churches for the  500,000 Europeans who were in Morocco.

Pope Saint John Paul II meets 80 000 young Moroccans

In the19 60s and 1970s, there were strong initiatives concerning Inter-religious dialogue. All these initiatives eventually culminated in the historic event for the Church in Morocco and the Islamic-Christian dialogue when Pope Saint John Paul II visited Casablanca on 19 August 1985. At that event, Pope Saint John Paull II addressed a memorable meeting, in Casablanca, 0f 80,000 young Moroccans at the Mohammed V stadium.