21.04.2025 14:05
The life of Pope Francis is filled with remarkable dates and events that could be the subject of a film. Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina on December 17, 1936, he was elected as the 266th Pope on March 13, 2013. Throughout his career, he witnessed many significant events and made numerous important decisions. He passed away on April 21, 2025, due to complications related to pneumonia.
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Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the first pope of America, was born on December 17, 1936, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He passed away on April 21, 2025, due to complications related to pneumonia at the Gemelli Hospital in Rome.
Important events in the life of Pope Francis, who passed away on April 21, 2025:
December 17, 1936: Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as the eldest of five children of Mario Jose Bergoglio, an Italian accountant, and Regina María Sívori, the daughter of Italian immigrants.
December 13, 1969: He was ordained as a priest in the Jesuit order and led the order as the superior leader of the province during the country's murderous dictatorship that began in the 1970s.
May 20, 1992: He was appointed as the auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires and became the archbishop of the Argentine capital in 1998, succeeding Cardinal Antonio Quarracino.
February 21, 2001: He was elevated to the cardinalate by St. John Paul II.
May 2007: He helped prepare the final document of the fifth meeting of Latin American bishops held in Aparecida, Brazil. This document synthesized the Pope's concerns for the poor, indigenous peoples, and the environment, along with the need for a missionary church.
March 13, 2013: He was elected as the 266th pope, becoming the first pope from America, the first Jesuit pope, and the first pope to take the name of St. Francis of Assisi.
April 13, 2013: He formed a kitchen cabinet consisting of eight cardinals from around the world to assist him in governing the Church and reorganizing the bureaucracy.
May 12, 2013: He canonized the "Martyrs of Otranto," 813 Italians who were killed in 1480 for resisting the Turkish invaders' demands to convert to Islam. Francis nearly doubled the number of saints canonized in a single ceremony compared to the 480 saints canonized during St. John Paul II's quarter-century papacy; this number exceeded the total of all his predecessors over 500 years.
July 8, 2013: He made his first trip outside Rome to the island of Lampedusa in Sicily to meet with new immigrants and condemned the "globalization of indifference" shown towards potential refugees.
July 30, 2013: When asked about a gay priest at a press conference, he expressed a more tolerant stance towards the LGBTQ+ community by saying, "Who am I to judge?"
November 26, 2013: He published the papal mission statement in Evangelii Gaudium ("The Joy of the Gospel"), condemning the world financial system that excludes the poor and declaring that the Eucharist is "not a reward for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak."
May 25, 2014: As a show of support for the Palestinian cause, he made an unscheduled stop to pray in front of the wall separating Israel from the town of Bethlehem in the West Bank.
June 8, 2014: He hosted the presidents of Israel and Palestine in the Vatican gardens for peace prayers.
March 20, 2015: He accepted the resignation of Scottish Cardinal Keith O'Brien, who had been accused of sexual harassment by adult men.
June 18, 2015: He published an environmental manifesto titled "Laudato Si" ("Praise Be"), calling for a cultural revolution to correct the "structurally distorted" global economic system that exploits the poor and turns the world into "a huge pile of filth."
July 10, 2015: He apologized in Bolivia for the sins and crimes committed by the Catholic Church against indigenous peoples during the colonization of America.
September 8, 2015: He made the annulment process faster, cheaper, and simpler for divorced Catholics to remarry in the Church.
September 24, 2015: In his first address to the U.S. Congress, he called on Congress to take action on climate change, immigration, and poverty reduction, inviting them to rediscover America's ideals.
November 29, 2015: He opened the Holy Door of the Cathedral in Bangui, Central African Republic, instead of the Vatican, to launch the Jubilee of Mercy.
February 12, 2016: During a stop in Havana, he met with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill and said, "We are brothers"; this was the first meeting between a pope and a patriarch in over 1000 years.
February 18, 2016: He prayed for migrants who died at the U.S.-Mexico border and later stated that then-presidential candidate Donald Trump's desire to build a border wall was "not Christian."
April 8, 2016: The footnote of the document "Amoris Laetitia" ("The Joy of Love") opened the way for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Communion.
April 16, 2016: He visited a refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos and brought 12 Syrian Muslims to Rome on the papal plane to make a call for solidarity with migrants.
September 19, 2016: His openness towards divorced and remarried Catholics was questioned in a letter written by four conservative cardinals seeking clarification.
December 1, 2017: During a meeting with Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, he said, "Today, they are also called Rohingya in the presence of God."
January 19, 2018: During his visit to Chile, he further damaged the credibility of the Catholic Church by accusing victims of sexual abuse of slander. He later ordered a Vatican investigation into the abuse crisis in Chile.
April 12, 2018: He acknowledged making "serious errors" in the judiciary regarding the sexual abuse scandal in Chile. He later summoned Chilean bishops to Rome to secure their resignations and invited abuse victims to the Vatican to apologize.
August 3, 2018: With a change in official church teaching, the death penalty was declared "inadmissible" under any circumstances.
July 28, 2018: He accepted the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick from the College of Cardinals and ordered him to do penance and pray until the investigation into allegations of sexual abuse of minors and adults was completed.
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August 26, 2018: Retired Vatican ambassador Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano published a bombshell accusation claiming that U.S. and Vatican officials covered up McCarrick's sexual abuse for twenty years and called for Francis to resign.
September 22, 2018: The Vatican and China signed a historic agreement regarding the appointment of bishops.
October 14, 2018: The process of canonization for Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero, delayed for decades by conservative cardinals, was completed, and he was declared a saint.
February 4, 2019: By signing the "Document on Human Fraternity" with the Imam of Al-Azhar, he established cooperative relations between Catholics and Muslims.
February 16, 2019: Following the revelation in a Vatican investigation that McCarrick had sexually abused minors and adults, McCarrick was removed from his position.
February 21, 2019: The first Vatican summit on child protection began, warning bishops and urging believers not only to condemn clerical sexual abuse but also to take action.
May 9, 2019: A new church law was enacted requiring incidents of clerical sexual abuse to be reported internally rather than to the police; procedures for investigating accused bishops, cardinals, and clergy were established.
October 25, 2019: After conservative activists stole indigenous statues from a church in the Vatican area and threw them into the Tiber River as a sign of opposition to the Pope, he apologized to Amazon bishops and tribal leaders.
November 24, 2019: During his visit to Japan's Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he declared the use and possession of nuclear weapons to be "immoral."
December 17, 2019: The use of the term "pontifical secret" in cases of clerical sexual abuse was abolished, allowing bishops to share internal documents regarding abusers with law enforcement.
February 12, 2020: He refused to approve the ordination of married men as priests in response to objections from Amazon bishops, glossing over the issue in the document "Querida Amazonia" ("Dear Amazon").
March 27, 2020: He delivered the evening prayer alone from the walkway in St. Peter's Square to the world fighting the coronavirus pandemic.
October 4, 2020: The encyclical "Fratelli Tutti" ("All Brothers") was published, arguing that the pandemic proved the failure of market capitalism theories and that a new type of policy is needed to promote human fraternity.
November 10, 2020: In the Vatican's report on McCarrick, it was stated that the Vatican did not take seriously or dismissed allegations of sexual abuse by U.S. bishops, cardinals, and popes, but forgave Francis.
March 5-8, 2021: He became the first pope to visit Iraq and met with the country's top Shia Muslim cleric.
July 4, 2021: He underwent intestinal surgery at Gemelli Hospital in Rome, where a 33-centimeter (13-inch) section of his colon was removed.
January 5, 2023: He presided over the funeral mass of Pope Benedict XVI.
January 24, 2023: In an interview with the Associated Press, he stated, "Being gay is not a crime."
March 29, 2023: He was hospitalized at Gemelli Hospital in Rome due to a respiratory infection; he was discharged on April 1.
June 7, 2023: He underwent surgery to remove scar tissue in the intestine and repair a hernia in the abdominal wall.
October 4, 2023: A synod was opened to make the Church more sensitive to ordinary believers, allowing women to vote alongside bishops for the first time in this synod.
November 28, 2023: He canceled his visit to Dubai to speak at the UN climate conference and prepare a new ecological manifesto titled "Laudate Deum" ("Praise God") due to a new case of acute bronchitis.
December 16, 2023: The Vatican court found Cardinal Angelo Becciu guilty of embezzlement in one of several rulings in a complex financial case that exposed the city-state's dirty laundry and tested its justice system, sentencing him to 5.5 years in prison.
December 19, 2023: The approval of blessings for same-sex couples, provided they do not resemble marriage, led to strong opposition from conservative bishops in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere.
July 5, 2024: The Vatican excommunicated Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a leading critic of Francis, for schism.
September 10, 2024: Approximately 600,000 people, half of East Timor's population, attended Pope Francis's mass in Dili. This is believed to be the largest attendance for a papal event in terms of population ratio.
December 26, 2024: Two days after the official opening of the 2025 Jubilee, the holy door of Rebibbia prison in Rome was opened.
January 16, 2025: He was seen with a sling after a fall that caused bruising to his right arm, following another fall a few weeks earlier that apparently bruised his chin.
February 14, 2025: He was hospitalized after a bronchitis attack worsened and later developed into a complicated lung infection and double pneumonia.
February 28, 2025: His doctors briefly considered pausing treatment after a respiratory crisis, but instead opted for an aggressive treatment method that carried the risk of organ damage.
March 13, 2025: The 12th anniversary of his election as pope while he was hospitalized.
March 23, 2025: He was discharged from the hospital after a 38-day treatment, but appeared weak and frail when he went out to greet the crowd below from the balcony that day.
April 17, 2025: Still recovering from double pneumonia, Francis continues the tradition of spending time with the least fortunate and visits prisoners at Regina Caeli prison in Rome. Although he states that he could not perform the foot-washing ritual for 12 people as a sign of humility, he adds that he wants to be with them and "do what Jesus did on Holy Thursday."
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