(The Center Square) – The Vatican announced early Monday morning that Pope Francis had passed away.
He had served as pope since 2013, and his official cause of death is not yet public, though he has had ongoing health issues for months.
The pope’s health had been waning over the past several years, and in the months before he passed, he was hospitalized for double pneumonia.
Cardinal Kevin Farrell will be the church’s administrator until a new pope is chosen.
The pope, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires in 1936, marked a number of firsts for the Catholic Church.
He was the first pope from the Americas and the first from a Jesuit order, as well as the first pope to publicly endorse same-sex civil unions. He also authorized priests to give blessings to same-sex couples, though they are still not allowed to marry them.
“Homosexual people have the right to be in a family… What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered,” he said in the 2020 documentary, Francesco.
He also addressed climate change in an official church document for the first time in his Laudato Si’ in 2015.
