- Safiu Kehinde
The first Latin American leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis, has died after long battle with illness.
The Vatican confirmed this in a video statement on Monday.
According to Reuters, the demise of the popular clergyman who died at the age of 88 ended an often turbulent reign marked by division and tension as he sought to overhaul the hidebound institution.
He had recently survived a serious bout of double pneumonia.
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“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.” Vatican announced
Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio on the 17th of December 1936, Pope Francis was the first pope from the Society of Jesus (the Jesuit Order), the first from the Americas and the Southern Hemisphere, and the first born or raised outside Europe since the 8th-century Syrian pope Gregory III.
NPO Reports that the Pontiff had experienced mounting health challenges that increasingly limited his mobility and public engagements.
He underwent colon surgery in 2021 and battled chronic knee pain that often left him reliant on a wheelchair.
In June 2023 he was admitted at an hospital for an operation on his intestine.
At the time, the Vatican said he had been suffering “recurrent, painful and worsening” symptoms caused by an abdominal hernia.
His death has plunged many Catholics across the world into mourning.