Pope Francis died on April 21, 2025, ending a papacy that began on March 13, 2013. Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he became the 266th pope of the Catholic Church and the first pope from the Western Hemisphere, South America and the Jesuit order.
His death closes a period that started after the conclave of March 2013, when Pope Benedict XVI had resigned in 2013. For Catholics and the wider Catholic Church, the loss marks the end of a papacy that combined global reach with an unusually specific personal path from Buenos Aires to the Vatican.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 1958
Jorge Mario Bergoglio entered the Jesuit order as a novice in 1958, was ordained in 1969 and took his final vows in 1973. Those steps matter because they show how early his identity as a Jesuit shaped the man who later took the name Pope Francis, honoring Saint Francis of Assisi with a papal name no previous pope had chosen.
That sequence also explains why the papacy he led looked different from those that came before it. His formation began long before March 13, 2013, and the path from novice to pope spans the exact kind of progression the Catholic Church recognizes as vocation, training and final commitment.
The Church of Mercy and his words
The Church of Mercy, published in 2014, gathered speeches, homilies and papers from his first year as pope. In The Church of Mercy, in a section titled "The Christian Message", he wrote: "Let us not close our hearts, let us not lose confidence, let us never give up." He also wrote that "newness often makes us fearful," and that "we are afraid of God's surprises," but He "always surprises us."
That written record gives a direct view of the tone he brought to the papacy: pastoral, urgent and focused on confidence rather than distance. It also provides a useful frame for readers trying to place his legacy, because the same source that praises humility and reforms also records that his papacy ended with his death on April 21, 2025.
Vatican after April 21, 2025
The verified facts do not set out the next step for the Catholic Church. What they do establish is the full arc: birth in Buenos Aires, Argentina on Dec. 17, 1936; Jesuit formation in 1958, 1969 and 1973; election from the conclave of March 2013 after Pope Benedict XVI resigned; and a papacy that ran from March 13, 2013 to April 21, 2025.
For Catholics and the Vatican, the immediate reality is that the church has lost the first pope from South America, the first from the Western Hemisphere and the first Jesuit pope. The remaining question is how strongly those firsts, and the themes tied to them, will define how Pope Francis is remembered in the Catholic Church.
