WORLD leaders reacted to Pope Francis’ death on Monday with praise for his efforts to reform the worldwide church and offering condolences to the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni mourned the departure of “a great man, a great shepherd.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said: “He inspired millions, far beyond the Catholic Church, with his humility and love so pure for the less fortunate.”
Jose Ramos-Horta, the president of East Timor, where Francis visited in September 2024 as part of the longest foreign trip of his papacy, said the pope “leaves behind a profound legacy of humanity, of justice, of human fraternity.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed Francis as an outstanding man, the Kremlin said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he knew how to foster unity and give hope.
Argentines, fresh from holding Easter family gatherings around the parrilla barbecue, woke on Monday to the sad news that the former archbishop of Buenos Aires had died in the Vatican at the age of 88 after battling illness.
Born in Buenos Aires as Jorge Bergoglio in 1936 to Italian immigrant parents, Francis was the first Latin American pope. Some in his homeland regretted that he never returned as pontiff, but he gained plaudits for his focus on the poor.
“It is with profound sorrow that I learned this sad morning that Pope Francis, Jorge Bergoglio, passed away today and is now resting in peace,” Argentina’s libertarian President Javier Milei wrote in a message on social media platform X.
Milei, a bombastic economist strongly in favor of free markets, had clashed with the pope previously, lambasting him as a socialist and even calling him the devil’s representative on earth, though patched things up once in office.
Argentina’s presidency office praised Pope Francis’ focus on inter-religious dialogue, building up spirituality amongst the young and for pushing cost-cutting in the Vatican, something that tallies with Milei’s “chainsaw” austerity.
“Despite differences that seem minor today, having been able to know him in his goodness and wisdom was a true honor for me,” Milei added on X. “I bid farewell to the Holy Father and stand with all of us who are today dealing with this sad news.”
Francis enjoyed considerable prestige internationally, both for his calls for social justice as well as for risky political overtures.
He made more than 45 international trips including the first by any pope to Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Myanmar, North Macedonia, Bahrain and Mongolia.
In 2014, secret contacts mediated by the Vatican resulted in a rapprochement between the long-hostile United States and Cuba.
In 2018, he led the Vatican to a landmark deal on the appointment of bishops in China, which conservatives criticized as a sell-out by the Church to Beijing’s communist government.
Under his watch, the Vatican and the United Nations teamed up to hold international conferences on climate change and in June 2015 he issued an encyclical in which he demanded “action now” to save the planet.
In the 2018 interview with Reuters, he said then US President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement had pained him “because the future of humanity is at stake.” The pope and Trump were at odds over many issues, mostly immigration.
Throughout his pontificate, Francis spoke out for the rights of refugees and criticized countries that shunned migrants.
He visited the Greek island of Lesbos and brought a dozen refugees to Italy on his plane, and asked Church institutions to work to stop human trafficking and modern slavery.
He ordered his charity arm to help the homeless in the neighborhood around the Vatican, opening a shelter and a place for them to have baths and haircuts and see foot doctors. He gave the homeless a private tour of the Sistine Chapel.
During a trip to Sicily in 2018, he appealed to “brothers and sisters of the Mafia” to repent, saying the island needed “men and women of love, not men and women ‘of honor,’” using the term mobsters apply to themselves.
After a wave of Islamist militant attacks in France in 2015-2016, including the killing of an elderly priest who was saying Mass, the pope called on all religions to declare that killing in God’s name was “Satanic.”
Argentines long waited for Pope Francis to visit the homeland he left in 2013. With his death on Monday, those hopes for his return end unrealized.
Francis never returned to Argentina, where he divided opinion but gained the moniker of the “slum pope” for his focus on the poor and spending time in the capital’s tough urban neighborhoods, or “villas.”
“One of the great curiosities of his papacy was the fact that, unlike his predecessors, Francis never visited his native country,” Jimmy Burns, author of the 2015 biography “Francis, Pope of Good Promise”, told Reuters weeks before his death.
Burns said he believed Francis did not want to be seen siding either with the left-leaning Peronists or the conservatives in the country’s polarized political environment.
“Any visit would try and be exploited by one side or the other, and he would unwittingly fuel those divisions,” he said.
Many in Argentina anticipated a visit to the country shortly after Francis took office and visited Brazil. There was again chatter about a trip last year. But in both cases the visit never materialized.
Guillermo Marco, spokesman for the pope when he was Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, told Reuters it had been a “wasted opportunity” for Argentina. Francis, he said, had a “tango soul” – a reference to the music and dance that has its origins in the back streets of Buenos Aires.
“He would have liked to (come) if he could have made a simple trip, let’s say, where he came to visit the people he loves and, I don’t know, celebrate a mass for the people,” said Marco, who retained a close relationship with Francis.
In September last year, the pope had told journalists he had wanted to go to Argentina, saying “they are my people,” but that “various matters had to be resolved first.”
Some said Francis should have visited regardless of the political environment.
“The chorus is divided. There are those who say that he should have come anyway because it would have helped close the political rift a little,” said Sergio Rubin, Argentine journalist and co-author of papal biography “The Jesuit.”
Many of Argentina’s faithful would have liked to welcome Francis home and remember him as Bergoglio, born in 1936 in Buenos Aires to Italian immigrants.
“I’m very sad. Sometimes I ask (in prayer) why didn’t he return to see his children?” said 83-year-old Buenos Aires resident Rita Hernandez, citing other trips the pope made to the region.
“I feel a pain. It’s as if he had walked past the patio of his house but never came in.”
