By Jabali Media
Head of the Catholic Church in the World, Pope Francis, real name Jorge Mario Bergoglio is dead.
The Argentine, the first Latin American leader of the Roman Catholic Church died on Monday morning.
Pope Francis was 88, and had recently survived a serious bout of double pneumonia.
"Dear brothers and sisters, it is with profound sadness that I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis," Cardinal Kevin Farrell announced on the Vatican's TV channel.
"At 7:35 this morning the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father,” he added.
His papacy started on March 13, 2013, when he was surprisingly elected to succeed Pope Benedict XVI (born Joseph Alois Ratzinger) who resigned on February 28, 2013.
Benedict died on December 31, 2022, aged 95.
During his entire time in office, Pope Francis sought to project simplicity into the grand role and never took possession of the decorative papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace used by his predecessors, saying he preferred to live in a community setting for his "psychological health."
He inherited a Church that was under attack over a child sex abuse scandal and torn by infighting in the Vatican bureaucracy.
His main mandate was to restore order. As his papacy progressed, he faced fierce criticism from conservatives, who accused him of trashing cherished traditions.
It goes without saying that Pope Francis struggled with internal dissent, but he became a global superstar, drawing huge crowds on his many foreign travels, among them Kenya.
He visited Kenya from November 25 to 27, 2015, as part of his first trip to Africa.
According to the BBC, a papal funeral has traditionally been an elaborate affair, but Pope Francis recently approved plans to make the whole procedure less complex.
Previous pontiffs were buried in three nested coffins made of cypress, lead and oak. Pope Francis opted for a simple wooden coffin lined with zinc.
He also scrapped the tradition of placing the Pope's body on a raised platform - known as a catafalque - in St Peter's Basilica for public viewing.
Instead, mourners will be invited to pay their respects while his body remains inside the coffin, with the lid removed.
Francis will also be the first Pope in more than a Century to be buried outside the Vatican. He will be laid to rest in the Basilica of St Mary Major, one of four major papal basilicas in Rome.
He is the Church's 266th pontiff.
