TEHRAN (Iran News) The Vatican announced that Pope Francis passed away on Monday at the age of 88 at his residence in the Casa Santa Marta within the Vatican.

He had been hospitalized on February 14, 2025, due to bronchitis.

His health worsened over this period, and doctors diagnosed him with bilateral pneumonia on February 18, as reported by Vatican News.

After spending 38 days in the hospital, he was returned to his residence at Casa Santa Marta for recovery.

The pope faced respiratory illnesses in recent years. In November 2023, he canceled his planned visit to the United Arab Emirates due to illness.

Born on December 17, 1963, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, his full name was Jorge Mario Bergoglio. He was elected to succeed Pope Benedict XVI on March 13, 2013.

His health worsened over this period, and doctors diagnosed him with bilateral pneumonia on February 18, as reported by Vatican News.

After spending 38 days in the hospital, he was returned to his residence at Casa Santa Marta for recovery.

The pope faced respiratory illnesses in recent years. In November 2023, he canceled his planned visit to the United Arab Emirates due to illness.

His health worsened over this period, and doctors diagnosed him with bilateral pneumonia on February 18, as reported by Vatican News.

After spending 38 days in the hospital, he was returned to his residence at Casa Santa Marta for recovery.

The pope faced respiratory illnesses in recent years. In November 2023, he canceled his planned visit to the United Arab Emirates due to illness.

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Recently, senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Mostafa Mohaqqeq Damad penned a letter to Pope Francis in Vatican and asked him to help lift the cruel US sanctions against Iran amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Vatican responded in a letter to the Iranian scholar and said that the Vatican’s secretary of state Cardinal Pietro Parolin had contacted US Ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft and relayed to the diplomat Iran’s concern, demanding Washington to pay attention to the issue.

Ayatollah Mohaqqeq Damad, who is a senior member of the Academy of Sciences of Iran, in his letter, said, “The sanctions have greatly multiplied the sufferings and afflictions of the oppressed Iranian Muslim people and have forced them to face countless problems that have had a profound and negative impact on their life, on their peace and spiritual tranquility and moreover, have deprived them of the most basic and inalienable human rights”.

The Vatican further expressed sympathy with people in Iran and all other countries gripped by the coronavirus, stating that this ordeal brings to light the fact that people are members of the same human community and should set aside enmity and hate.

In the letter, the Vatican said Pope Francis has urged all humans to live in peace and harmony on the planet earth.

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Addressing thousands of people during Christmas Eve Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, the Pope said, “God continues to love us all, even the worst of us.”

“You may have mistaken ideas, you may have made a complete mess of things, but the Lord continues to love you. How often do we think that God is good if we are good and punishes us if we are bad! Yet, that is not how he is,” said the Argentine pontiff, Catholics Pope on Christmas eve.

“God does not love you because you think and act the right way. He loves you, plain and simple. His love is unconditional; it does not depend on you,” he added.

The Catholic Church has faced a series of child sexual abuse accusations across the world in the past few decades.

Without directly mentioning the crisis, Francis said that “whatever goes wrong in our lives, whatever doesn’t work in the Church, whatever problems there are in the world, will no longer serve as an excuse.”

In a most recent case, Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic, Cardinal George Pell was convicted of abusing two choir boys in Melbourne in 1996.

Francis himself has previously faced accusations of not responding effectively to the Church’s sex-abuse crisis. Last year, he was accused of wrongdoing by rehabilitating a top official who had abused his authority.

In an attempt to confront the abuses, the Pope last Tuesday abolished the rule of “pontifical secrecy” in sex abuse investigations.

The rule allowed some Church officials to hide behind it instead of cooperating with authorities over child abuse accusations.

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In his message, the Pope also said he is praying for the emergency personnel involved in rescue efforts and said he had “invoked divine blessings of consolation and strength on those who grieve”.

The floods, caused by torrential rain, have affected 25 of Iran’s 31 provinces in recent days, with Golestan in the north and Fars in the south, among the most severely affected ones.

More than two dozen people have been killed as a result of the flooding countrywide. The southern city of Shiraz, the capital of Fars province, with 19 deaths that occurred during Monday’s floods accounts for the highest number of casualties.

Meanwhile, rescue efforts are underway in several provinces.

Meteorologists are predicting that the downpours will briefly recede in most parts of the country but they have forecast more heavy showers and warned of deluges and landslides.

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Ranks of nuns sang in Latin, accompanied by organ music, as Francis — making the first papal visit to the mainly Buddhist nation — delivered a homily urging compassion, opening his speech with “minglabar”, Burmese for hello.

“I can see that the Church here is alive,” he said of a Catholic community numbering around 700,000 — a tiny fraction of the country’s 51 million people.

Earlier Francis smiled and waved as he moved through the estimated 150,000 faithful in his “popemobile”. Many worshippers held Myanmar flags and wore colourful costume from the country’s myriad ethnic groups.

“I never dreamed I would see him in my lifetime,” said Meo, an 81-year-old from the Akha minority in Shan state.

Like many others at the mass she is from one of Myanmar’s conflict-riddled borderlands, where minority groups have long been marginalised by the Buddhist-dominated state.

A boy waves the Myanmar flag as he and other Catholic faithful wait for Pope Francis to say mass in a stadium in Yangon on November 29, 2017

“This is the most Catholics I have ever seen,” added Gregory Than Zaw, 40, an ethnic Karen, who made the five-hour bus journey to Yangon with 90 people from his village.

The pope is set to hold a meeting with Buddhist leaders later Wednesday, on a visit that has been strong political as well as religious overtones.

– ‘Respect for rights’ –

The pontiff arrived on Monday in a country on the defensive after an outcry from the international community over the plight of its Rohingya Muslim minority, who have been driven to Bangladesh in huge numbers.

He held private talks with both civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the powerful army chief Min Aung Hlaing.

But Francis avoided mentioning the crisis — or the Rohingya — directly in a speech in the country’s capital Naypyidaw on Tuesday, calling simply for “respect for rights and justice”.

His caution so far on a four-day trip will bring relief to Myanmar’s Catholic leaders, who had urged the pontiff not to wade into the treacherous issue for fear of sparking a backlash from Buddhist hardliners.

A woman attends a mass led by Pope Francis in Yangon on November 29, 2017

Even the mention of the name Rohingya is incendiary to many among the majority-Buddhist population, who deny the group are a distinct minority and insist on calling them “Bengalis”.

Reactions to the pope’s handling of the issue were mixed, with some Rohingya expressing disappointment that he did not draw direct attention to their suffering as he had done in several appeals from abroad.

But Kyaw Min, a former MP and prominent Rohingya activist, said he understood the pressures the pope was under and the pontiff had managed to speak about the group’s plight indirectly.

“He said there were some people who have been bullied and need to get their rights … this was about the Rohingya,” Kyaw Min told AFP.

A military crackdown has forced more than 620,000 Rohingya over the last three months to flee their homes in northern Rakhine state to one of the world’s biggest refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh.

The army has justified the campaign as a proportionate retaliation for deadly attacks by hardline Rohingya militants in August.

But the UN and the US have labelled it ethnic cleansing and rights groups accuse the military of crimes against humanity, with refugees recounting consistent reports of murder, rape and arson.

On December 5 the UN’s Human Rights Council will hold a special session to discuss the Rohingya crisis.

There have been Catholics in Myanmar for over 500 years and they generally enjoy good relations with the Buddhist majority.

A young Catholic faithful waves a flag during an open air mass held by Pope Francis in Yangon on November 29, 2017

In the last three years, the Vatican has canonised Myanmar’s first saint and named its first cardinal before full diplomatic ties were established in May this year, paving the way for the pontiff’s visit.

“When we heard the sound of his words, we could tell they came from the heart… and that gives us peace,” 47-year-old Yangon resident Ko Ko Lay told AFP, after the mass had finished.

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