VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis, history's first Latin American pontiff who charmed the world with his humble style and concern for the poor but alienated conservatives with critiques of capitalism and climate change, died Monday. He was 88.

The Vatican said Francis died of a cerebral stroke that put him into a coma and led to irreversible heart failure.

Bells tolled in Catholic churches from his native Argentina to the Philippines and across Rome as news spread around the world.

"At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the home of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and of his Church," Cardinal Kevin Farrell said from the chapel of the Domus Santa Marta, where Francis lived.

Francis, who suffered from chronic lung disease and had part of one lung removed as a young man, was admitted to Gemelli hospital on Feb. 14, 2025, for a respiratory crisis that developed into double pneumonia. He spent 38 days there, the longest hospitalization of his 12-year papacy.

He made his last public appearance on Easter Sunday — a day before his death — to bless thousands of people in St. Peter's Square, drawing wild cheers and applause. Beforehand, he met U.S. Vice President JD Vance.

Francis performed the blessing from the same loggia where he was introduced on March 13, 2013, as the 266th pope.

From his first greeting that night — a remarkably normal "Buonasera" ("Good evening") — to his embrace of refugees and the downtrodden, Francis signaled a very different tone for the papacy, stressing humility over hubris for a Catholic Church beset by scandal and accusations of indifference.

Multiple lawmakers from Nevada have taken to X, formerly known as Twitter, to acknowledge the Pope’s passing, highlighting the legacy he’s leaving behind.

“Today, we mourn the passing of Pope Francis—our first Latin American pope. His papacy brought the Church closer to the poor, the immigrant, and the forgotten,” state Sen. Fabian Doñate (D-Las Vegas) said on social media.” Gracias, Papa Francisco.”

Assm. Duy Nguyen (D-Las Vegas) praised Francis’ embodiment of love, hope and compassion. 

“He spoke of being kind to the poor and showing mercy to migrant communities,” Nguyen wrote on X. “During times like these, we need more leaders speaking from a place of love.”

The Argentine-born Jorge Mario Bergoglio brought a breath of fresh air into a 2,000-year-old institution that had seen its influence wane during the troubled tenure of Pope Benedict XVI, whose surprise resignation led to Francis' election.

But Francis soon invited troubles of his own, and conservatives grew increasingly upset with his progressive bent, outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics and crackdown on traditionalists. His greatest test came in 2018 when he botched a notorious case of clergy sexual abuse in Chile, and the scandal that festered under his predecessors erupted anew.

And then Francis, the crowd-loving, globe-trotting pope of the peripheries, navigated the unprecedented reality of leading a universal religion through the coronavirus pandemic from a locked-down Vatican City.

"We have realized that we are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented," Francis told an empty St. Peter's Square in March 2020. Calling for a rethink of the global economic framework, he said the pandemic showed the need for "all of us to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other."

World leaders on Monday extolled Francis' commitment to the marginalized. French President Emmanuel Macron, whose country is largely Catholic, wrote on X: "From Buenos Aires to Rome, Pope Francis wanted the church to bring joy and hope to the poorest. ... May this hope forever outlast him."

Flags flew at half-staff in Italy, and crowds gathered in St. Peter's Square. When the great bells of St. Peter's Basilica began tolling, tourists stopped in their tracks to record the moment on their phones.

Gov. Joe Lombardo followed suit and also directed all flags in Nevada be lowered immediately. Flags will stay lowered in the state until the sun sets on the day Francis has been buried. 

Francis' death sets off a weekslong process of allowing the faithful to pay their final respects, first for Vatican officials in the Santa Marta chapel and then in St. Peter's for the general public, followed by a funeral and a conclave to elect a new pope.

Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV) described him as “a great leader who put compassion for all humans above all else.”

“I loved Pope Francis,” Lee wrote. “I am so sad to hear of his passing and my heart goes out to the millions of people who, like me, valued his leadership.”

Reforming the Vatican

Francis was elected on a mandate to reform the Vatican bureaucracy and finances but went further in shaking up the church without changing its core doctrine. 

"Who am I to judge?" he replied when asked about a purportedly gay priest.

The comment sent a message of welcome to the LGBTQ+ community and those who felt shunned by a church that had stressed sexual propriety over unconditional love. "Being homosexual is not a crime," he told The Associated Press in 2023, urging an end to civil laws that criminalize it.

Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV) also noted the Pope’s advocacy efforts.

“The first Jesuit and Latin American pope,” Horsford wrote on social media. “He championed the poor, spoke out on climate change, embraced equality, and pushed for compassion across faiths.” 

Stressing mercy, Francis changed the church's position on the death penalty, calling it inadmissible in all circumstances. He also declared the possession of nuclear weapons, not just their use, was "immoral."

In other firsts, he approved an agreement with China over bishop nominations that had vexed the Vatican for decades, met the Russian patriarch and charted new relations with the Muslim world by visiting the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq.

He reaffirmed the all-male, celibate priesthood and upheld the church's opposition to abortion, equating it to "hiring a hit man to solve a problem."

The Archdiocese of Las Vegas noted Francis’ death is not only a “tremendous loss” for the Catholic Church, but also for the world. 

“He was a voice for the voiceless, a champion of the marginalized, and a friend to all who sought his counsel. He will be deeply missed,” Las Vegas Archbishop George Leo Thomas wrote in a statement.

Roles for women

But he added women to important decision-making roles and allowed them to serve as lectors and acolytes in parishes. He let women vote alongside bishops in periodic Vatican meetings, following long-standing complaints that women do much of the church's work but are barred from power.

Sister Nathalie Becquart, whom Francis named to one of the highest Vatican jobs, said his legacy was a vision of a church where men and women existed in a relationship of reciprocity and respect.

"It was about shifting a pattern of domination — from human being to the creation, from men to women — to a pattern of cooperation," said Becquart, the first woman to hold a voting position in a Vatican synod.

Still, a note of criticism came Monday from the Women's Ordination Conference, which had been frustrated by Francis' unwillingness to push for the ordination of women.

"His repeated 'closed door' policy on women's ordination was painfully incongruous with his otherwise pastoral nature," the statement said.

The church as refuge

While Francis did not allow women to be ordained, the voting reform was part of a revolutionary change in emphasizing what the church should be: a refuge for everyone — "todos, todos, todos" ("everyone, everyone, everyone"). Migrants, the poor, prisoners and outcasts were invited to his table far more than presidents or powerful CEOs.

"For Pope Francis, (the goal) was always to extend the arms of the church to embrace all people, not to exclude anyone," said Farrell, the Vatican camerlengo, who takes charge after a pontiff's death.

Francis demanded his bishops apply mercy and charity to their flocks, pressed the world to protect God's creation from climate disaster, and challenged countries to welcome those fleeing war, poverty and oppression.

After visiting Mexico in 2016, Francis said of then-U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump that anyone building a wall to keep migrants out "is not Christian."

While progressives were thrilled with Francis' radical focus on Jesus' message of mercy and inclusion, it troubled conservatives who feared he watered down Catholic teaching and threatened the very Christian identity of the West. Some even called him a heretic.

A few cardinals openly challenged him. Francis usually responded with his typical answer to conflict: silence.

He made it easier for married Catholics to get an annulment, allowed priests to absolve women who had had abortions and decreed that priests could bless same-sex couples. He opened debate on issues like homosexuality and divorce, giving pastors wiggle room to discern how to accompany their flocks, rather than handing them strict rules to apply.

Missteps on sexual abuse scandal

But more than a year passed before Francis met with survivors of priestly sexual abuse, and victims' groups initially questioned whether he really understood the scope of the problem.

Francis did create a sex abuse commission to advise the church on best practices, but it lost influence after a few years and its recommendation of a tribunal to judge bishops who covered up for predator priests went nowhere.

And then came the greatest crisis of his papacy, when he discredited Chilean abuse victims in 2018 and stood by a controversial bishop linked to their abuser. Realizing his error, Francis invited the victims to the Vatican for a personal mea culpa and summoned the leadership of the Chilean church to resign en masse.

As that crisis concluded, a new one erupted over ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the retired archbishop of Washington and a counselor to three popes.

Francis had actually moved swiftly to sideline McCarrick amid an accusation he had molested a teenage altar boy in the 1970s. But Francis nevertheless was accused by the Vatican's one-time U.S. ambassador of having rehabilitated McCarrick early in his papacy.

Francis eventually defrocked McCarrick after a Vatican investigation determined he sexually abused adults as well as minors. He changed church law to remove the pontifical secret surrounding abuse cases and enacted procedures to investigate bishops who abused or covered for their pedophile priests, seeking to end impunity for the hierarchy.

"He sincerely wanted to do something and he transmitted that," said Juan Carlos Cruz, a Chilean abuse survivor Francis discredited who later developed a close friendship with the pontiff.

But groups that advocated for more action on sexual abuse expressed disappointment in Francis' legacy.

"Pope Francis was a beacon of hope to many of the world's most desperate and marginalized people. But what we most needed from this pope was justice for the Church's own wounded, the children and adults sexually abused by Catholic clergy. In this realm, where Francis had supreme power, he refused to make the necessary changes," said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the U.S.-based group BishopAccountability.

Soccer, opera and prayer

Born Dec. 17, 1936, in Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was the eldest of five children of Italian immigrants.

He credited his devout grandmother Rosa with teaching him how to pray. Weekends were spent listening to opera on the radio, going to Mass and attending matches of the family's beloved San Lorenzo soccer club. As pope, his love of soccer brought him a huge collection of jerseys from visitors.

He said he received his religious calling at 17 while going to confession, recounting in a 2010 biography that, "I don't know what it was, but it changed my life. ... I realized that they were waiting for me."

He entered the diocesan seminary but switched to the Jesuit order in 1958, attracted to its missionary tradition and militancy.

Around this time, he suffered from pneumonia, which led to the removal of part of his right lung. His frail health prevented him from becoming a missionary, and his less-than-robust lung capacity was perhaps responsible for his whisper of a voice and reluctance to sing at Mass.

On Dec. 13, 1969, he was ordained a priest, and immediately began teaching. In 1973, he was named head of the Jesuits in Argentina, an appointment he later acknowledged was "crazy" given he was only 36. "My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative," he admitted in his Civilta Cattolica interview.

Life under Argentina's dictatorship

His six-year tenure as the head of the order in Argentina coincided with the country's murderous 1976-83 dictatorship, when the military launched a campaign against left-wing guerrillas and other regime opponents.

Bergoglio didn't publicly confront the junta and was accused of effectively allowing two slum priests to be kidnapped and tortured by not publicly endorsing their work.

He refused for decades to counter that version of events. Only in a 2010 authorized biography did he finally recount the lengths he used to save them, persuading the family priest of feared dictator Jorge Videla to call in sick so he could celebrate Mass instead. Once in the junta leader's home, Bergoglio privately appealed for mercy. Both priests were eventually released, among the few to have survived prison.

As pope, accounts began to emerge of the many people — priests, seminarians and political dissidents —whom Bergoglio actually saved during the "dirty war," letting them stay incognito at the seminary or helping them escape the country.

Bergoglio went to Germany in 1986 to research a never-finished thesis. Returning to Argentina, he was stationed in Cordoba during a period he described as a time of "great interior crisis." Out of favor with more progressive Jesuit leaders, he was eventually rescued from obscurity in 1992 by St. John Paul II, who named him an auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires. He became archbishop six years later, and was made a cardinal in 2001.

He came close to becoming pope in 2005 when Benedict was elected, gaining the second-most votes in several rounds before bowing out.