Vatican historian Michael Walsh on the late Pope Francis’s legacy and his lifelong mission to heal a divided world.
Pope Francis “was a great reconciler”
When and how did Pope Francis die? A look at the pontiff’s last days
Pope Francis died on Easter Monday at the age of 88.
“Dearest brothers and sisters, with deep sorrow, I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis,” Cardinal Kevin Farrell announced on Monday.
“At 7:35 this morning [05:35 GMT], the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and of His Church,” he said.
Here is what we know about the death of the Argentinian pontiff, the first in history from Latin America, who led the Catholic Church for more than 12 years.
How did the pope die?
Pope Francis died of a stroke followed by a coma and heart failure on Monday morning, the Vatican’s press office said in a statement.
The pope has also suffered a “previous episode of acute respiratory failure”, arterial hypertension and type II diabetes, the statement said.
Farrell made the announcement at 9:47am (07:47 GMT), about two hours after Francis died. Farrell spoke from Domus Santa Marta, the apartment on Vatican grounds where Francis lived and where he had returned to recover after a hospitalisation for double pneumonia in February.
In the coming weeks, Farrell will play an important role, overseeing the administration of the Holy See until a new pope is chosen.
Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra seal the doors of the papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace and the door to the apartment of the Casa Santa Marta, where the late Pope Francis lived.
The rite of the certification of death and… pic. twitter. com/PP6j4SbqPr
What were Pope Francis’s health problems?
The pope was hospitalised for five weeks in February-March, initially suffering from a severe respiratory insufficiency from viral and bacterial infections. He had often struggled with bronchitis during winter.
He was subsequently diagnosed with a polymicrobial infection, which evolved to pneumonia in both lungs. Francis came close to death during his hospitalisation, according to his medical team.
He was also treated for an asthmatic respiratory episode, early-stage kidney failure, and a bronchial spasm that led him to aspirate vomit following a severe coughing fit.
He received noninvasive mechanical ventilation at night and high-flow oxygen therapy during the day.
His doctors had said the pope was so critically ill that the staff considered stopping his treatment so he could die.
“We had to choose whether to stop [treatment] and let him go, or push forward and try [to save him] with all the drugs and therapies possible, running the very high risk of damaging other organs. In the end, we took this path,” Sergio Alfieri, a general surgeon at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital, said in an interview recently.
According to Alfieri, it was the pope’s personal nurse, Massimiliano Strappetti, who urged the medical team to persist with treatment, saying, “Try everything – don’t give up. ”
His condition stabilised, and the pontiff continued his recovery at his residence. He made several public appearances over the past week, but his weak voice served as a reminder of his frailty.
How did Pope Francis spend his final days?
Doctors at Gemelli Hospital prescribed him a regimen of complete rest.
After 38 days in hospital, the pope was discharged on March 23. He returned to his residence at the Casa Santa Marta.
With Easter just three weeks away, the pope’s schedule grew increasingly demanding.
On April 9, he met King Charles of the United Kingdom and Queen Camilla at the Casa Santa Marta. This meeting coincided with their 20th wedding anniversary during their state visit to Italy.
The audience was arranged at the last minute, following the postponement of a planned formal state visit due to the pope’s health issues.
On April 17, Holy Thursday, a significant day in the Catholic calendar commemorating the Last Supper of Jesus Christ, Francis visited Rome’s Regina Coeli, where he met with some 70 inmates.
In past years, he had washed the feet of prisoners, echoing Jesus’s gesture with his disciples on the eve of his death. This time, however, the Vatican said he apologised for being unable to perform the ritual. Instead, he offered them rosaries and pocket-sized Gospels as gifts.
Four days later, on April 20, Francis received United States Vice President JD Vance at his residence.
“I know you have not been feeling great, but it’s good to see you in better health,” Vance said. “Thank you for seeing me. ”
The meeting came as the pope and Vatican officials have criticised several of President Donald Trump’s policies, particularly his efforts to deport migrants.
Francis has denounced the immigration crackdown as a “disgrace”. Meanwhile, Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, has defended the policy by referencing his interpretation of Catholic teachings from the medieval era.
It was the pope’s last diplomatic meeting.
Later that day, he delivered the traditional Urbi et Orbi blessing, Latin for “to the city and the world”, before thousands of Catholic pilgrims gathered in St Peter’s Square for the Vatican’s open-air Easter Sunday Mass.
During this time, the pope condemned the “deplorable humanitarian situation” caused by Israel’s 18 months of war on the Palestinian territory. He also called for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Then, to everyone’s surprise, he made his way down to Saint Peter’s Square, riding through the crowds in the open-top Popemobile – the iconic white Mercedes-Benz used by popes to greet the faithful.
Near the end of his final tour of the square, several children were lifted towards him.
It would be the last time the world saw him alive. He died the next morning.
Away from the global spotlight, Eritreans are trapped in a garrison state
American writer and security analyst Paul B Henze, who served in the Carter administration as a deputy to National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, once made a very astute observation about Eritrea’s current president, Isaias Afwerki.
In his 2007 book, Ethiopia in Mengistu’s Final Years: Until the Last Bullet, he noted “Isaias impressed me as remarkably similar in temperament and attitudes to Mengistu [Haile Mariam, Eritrea’s former dictator who has overseen the killings of tens of thousands of opposition figures and civilians]. He has many of the same mannerisms, a rather bulldoggish seriousness, a defensiveness behind a facade of feigned reasonableness that is not really convincing. One senses a stubborn, fundamentally authoritarian personality. ”
The similarities Henze saw between Mengistu and Isaias have proven correct and highly consequential over the last three decades.
After declaring victory against the Mengsitu regime in 1991, Isaias was able to oversee the emergence of an independent, sovereign Eritrea. For a brief moment, Eritreans were full of hope. They assumed independence would bring more freedom and better economic prospects. There was talk of turning Eritrea into Africa’s Singapore.
However, the euphoria of independence was short-lived. The dream of transforming Eritrea into a prosperous liberal democracy did not appeal to Isaias. He wanted his country to resemble not Singapore, but Sparta. He rejected the democratic constitution drafted by the pre-eminent Eritrean jurist Bereket Habte Selassie and ruled Eritrea with an iron fist.
In no time, he turned Eritrea into a garrison state. He transformed Eritrean institutions and society at large into tools to fulfil his geo-political fantasies. Eritreans became unwilling pawns in the president’s many military schemes, with no space left for their personal dreams and aspirations.
Isaias ruthlessly dealt with even his closest colleagues and allies who dared to suggest that Eritreans enjoy some basic liberties that people elsewhere in the world often take for granted.
In May 2001, 15 senior Eritrean officials, many of whom had been on the president’s side throughout the independence war, issued an open letter urging him to reconsider his autocratic mode of governance and hold free and fair elections. At the time, three of the 15 officials were living abroad, and one eventually changed his position and rejoined the Isaias government. The remaining 11, however, were swiftly arrested on unspecified charges. More than 20 years later, the fates of these 11 men are still unknown. No one knows for sure if they are alive or dead. No legal or religious counsel or family member has been granted access to them. There have been no charges, no trials, no conviction and no sentence.
Though these senior officials are among the most prominent in Eritrea to be meted such treatment, their fate is hardly unique. Anyone in Eritrea who dares to question the great wisdom of the infallible President Isaias meets the same fate.
In the nightmarish gulag state that President Isaias created, no one is free to study, work, worship, run a business or engage in any other normal activities. There is a mandatory and indefinite military service which keeps every Eritrean citizen in servitude to the supreme leader for their entire lives.
While everyone in Eritrea suffers from Isaias’s institutionalised tyranny, religious and ethnic minorities suffer the most. Religious persecution in the country is so extreme that in 2004 the US Department of State designated Eritrea as a “country of particular concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. There is also significant ethnic persecution in Isaias’s Eritrea. In a May 2023 report, for example, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Eritrea, Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker, underlined the harsh conditions faced by the Afar community who inhabit the Dankalia area of the country. Babiker wrote: “The Afar are one of the most disenfranchised communities in Eritrea. For several decades, they have been subjected to discrimination, harassment, arbitrary arrests, disappearance, violence, and widespread persecution. ”
In the end, Paul Henze’s insight about the fundamentally autocratic personality of Isaias proved not only right, but also an understatement. The oppression and violence of Isaias’s rule in the past three decades matched and at times surpassed that of Mengitsu.
Regrettably, the world rarely acknowledges the plight of Eritreans, who are forced to live their lives as unwilling servants and soldiers of their authoritarian president. The toll of Isais’s endless war schemes on Eritreans is still rarely mentioned in discussions about the region.
Eritrea under Isaias is a country always on a war footing. Right now, it is not only agitating against Ethiopia, but also actively involved in the civil war in Sudan. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to find a period in Eritrea’s post-independence history that it was not at war with one of its neighbours, or involved in some regional conflict or civil war. War is the modus vivendi of President Isaias.
The world is now paying some attention to Eritrea, because of the looming risk of conflict with Ethiopia. But even if conflict between the two neighbours is somehow prevented, the misery of Eritreans stuck in Isaias’s garrison state will continue. Forgotten and left to their own devices, Eritreans will continue to suffer in a brutal dictatorship where the individual is seen just as fodder for the mighty Eritrean Defence Forces. This must not be allowed to continue. The world must not avert its gaze and forget about the plight of Eritreans once their country is no longer mentioned in the news. The world needs to act before more Eritreans lose their lives and dreams fighting in Isaias’s forever wars.
Israeli spy chief accuses Netanyahu of demanding illegal operations
Israel’s spy chief has accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of trying to fire him for his refusal to commit illegal acts aimed at protecting the leader’s personal and political interests.
Ronen Bar, chief of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, made the assertion in an affidavit to the Supreme Court on Monday. Netanyahu’s move last month to dismiss Bar was suspended by the court pending an investigation, and the ensuing tussle has provoked large protests, with crowds accusing the prime minister of endangering democracy.
Netanyahu said he would sack the spy chief due to a breakdown in trust, supposedly linked to Hamas’s attack in October 2023 that led to the Gaza war.
However, Bar said Netanyahu’s decision was motivated by a series of events between November 2024 and February 2025.
In the unclassified part of the court submission, Bar said Netanyahu had told him “on more than one occasion” that he expected Shin Bet to take action against Israelis involved in antigovernment demonstrations, “with a particular focus on monitoring the protests’ financial backers”.
The Shin Bet head also said he had refused to sign off on a security request aimed at relieving Netanyahu from testifying at an ongoing corruption trial in which he faces charges of bribery, fraud and breach of public trust.
Netanyahu’s bid to oust Bar came as Shin Bet was investigating financial ties between the prime minister’s office and Qatar, a key mediator in the Gaza war. Critics say the firing is tainted by a conflict of interest and was meant to derail that inquiry.
Shin Bet also happened to be carrying out an inquiry based on suspicion that the government had ignored warnings in advance of Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, when the armed Palestinian group killed more than 1,100 people and took about 250 captive.
More than 50 of them remain in Gaza. Netanyahu and the hardline Zionist parties that support his government have faced harsh criticism for their failure to agree to a ceasefire and the return of the remaining prisoners.
Israel’s onslaught on Gaza has killed more than 51,000 people, according to the enclave’s Ministry of Health.
Netanyahu’s office has said Bar’s affidavit was “full of lies”, and later responded to several of his claims, stating that he had “failed miserably” when Hamas attacked Israel.
It also denied that the move to sack Bar was aimed at thwarting the so-called “Qatargate” investigation.
“The dismissal was not intended to prevent the investigation. Rather, the investigation was intended to prevent the dismissal,” it said.
Netanyahu’s move to sack Bar was suspended by the Supreme Court after political watchdogs and opposition lawmakers argued the dismissal was unlawful.
The bid to unseat the spy chief and the continuing fight have further fuelled the protests over the government’s failure to secure the captives from Gaza.
New Zealand’s minor gov’t party pushes to define women by biological sex
A minor party in New Zealand’s coalition government has announced proposals to legally define women by biological sex, casting the move as a return to common sense and a rejection of “woke ideology”.
The bill announced by the populist New Zealand First (NZF) party on Tuesday would define a woman and a man in law as a “human biological female” and “an adult human biological male”, respectively.
NZF leader Winston Peters, whose party governs in a coalition with the centre-right National Party and pro-business ACT New Zealand, said the proposed law would “reflect biological reality” and “provide legal certainty”.
“This Bill would ensure our country moves away from the woke ideology that has crept in over the last few years, undermining the protection, progression, and safety of women,” Peters, who serves as the deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, said in a post on X.
“These definitions in law fight back against the cancerous social engineering we’ve seen being pushed in society by a woke minority,” Peters added.
“The need for legislation like this shows how far the deluded left has taken us as a society. But we are fighting back. This bill is a win for common sense. ”
It is not clear whether the bill, which was introduced by an individual MP instead of the government, has a realistic prospect of becoming law.
NZF is the smallest of the three coalition partners in government, with 11 seats in the 123-member parliament, and most bills introduced by individual MPs ultimately do not end up on the statute books.
Chris Hipkins, the leader of the main opposition New Zealand Labour Party, accused the NZF of being interested in “one headline after the next”.
“They don’t really have a coherent programme and they’re certainly not focused on the things that are required to lead New Zealand forward,” Hipkins told Radio New Zealand.
The proposals come less than a week after the United Kingdom’s highest court ruled that women are defined by biological sex under the country’s equality laws.
Gaza’s Christians mourn death of Pope Francis
Gaza’s small Christian community is mourning the death of Pope Francis, who had maintained close and consistent video contact with the Palestinian devotees throughout the war that continues to devastate the enclave.
Since the outbreak of fighting between Israel and Hamas in October 2023, Francis had regularly called Gaza’s Christians, often several times a week, offering prayers, encouragement and solidarity.
“I always waited to hear the words of the Holy Father. I would watch him on television, and through the screens. He gave us hope with his messages and prayers,” said Elias al-Sayegh, 49, from Zeitoun.
“We felt we were alive because of his prayers and blessings. Every day, he renewed our hope for an end to the war and the bloodshed. His prayers will remain with us for peace in the land of peace, Palestine. ”
“I wish I could take part in the prayers at the Church of the Nativity and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,” he added, referring to ancient churches in Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.
“With the pope’s passing, we in Gaza feel as though a light of love and peace has been extinguished,” said 67-year-old George Ayad from al-Sahaba.
“Though the Vatican is far away, his voice always reached our hearts – he never ceased calling for peace and justice.