VATICAN CITY — The head of the Catholic Church Pope Francis has died at 88 after a short illness.

The pontiff was admitted to hospital in February with a respiratory tract infection, having suffered various ailments in his final years. Despite his declining health, he had firmly and repeatedly made clear that unlike his predecessor, he had no intention of resigning the papacy.

Born in Argentina in 1936, Jorge Mario Bergoglio took over the papacy in 2013 after Benedict XVI stood down. At the time the Jesuit Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he was the first pope from the Americas, and had already become a high-profile figure in Latin America in general, particularly thanks to his public statements during Argentina’s financial crisis in the early 2000s.

As Pope Francis, he projected a more austere, scaled-back image than his predecessor; one often-repeated story, never officially confirmed, claims that he refused to wear elaborate papal garb for his first public appearance, telling an aide that "the carnival is over."

The pope frequently expressed a personal identification with the poor and was known for speaking up for refugees and people displaced by conflict. During the 2015 migration crisis, which saw a surge in dangerous and deadly crossings to Europe over the Mediterranean, Pope Francis announced that the Vatican would take in two refugee families and called on Catholics to offer their help as well.

"Before the tragedy of tens of thousands of refugees fleeing death in conflict and hunger and are on a journey of hope, the gospel calls us to be close to the smallest and to those who have been abandoned," he said.

The pontiff also called for peace in various conflicts, including Israel’s recent assault on Gaza.

"We cannot in any way accept the bombing of civilians," he wrote in an address delivered in January. "We cannot accept that children are freezing to death because hospitals have been destroyed or a country's energy network has been hit."

"My wish for the year 2025 is that the entire international community will work above all to end the conflict that, for almost three years now, has caused so much bloodshed."

While the pope's comments about conflict and humanitarian crises won him sympathy around the world, he also created occasional controversy.

In May 2024, he was forced to issue an apology after two Italian newspapers reported he had used a homophobic insult in a private meeting where he expressed opposition to allowing homosexual men to train as priests.

The incident went against Pope Francis’ image as relatively tolerant of LGBTQ+ people compared to his predecessors.

Towards the end of his papacy, Pope Francis also had to confront persistent anger over the Church's cover-ups of child sexual abuse committed by clergy around the world. In 2014, he described the global scandal as "moral damage carried out by men of the Church" and said he felt the need to "personally ask for forgiveness" for the abuse itself and the protection of abusers by Catholic authorities.

A particularly sensitive moment came last year with a papal visit to Belgium, where the pope apologized for the abuse of hundreds of children by priests in Flanders and accepted that the Church should be "ashamed."

But while reforms and procedures to safeguard against abuse and hold perpetrators accountable were put in place under Pope Francis' leadership, there have still been numerous allegations of priests accused of abuse being moved to other dioceses rather than subject to formal investigation or criminal charges. — Euronews