<\/p>\n
Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church and Bishop of Rome since 2013, has died at the age of 88, the Vatican confirmed early this morning. His death was announced in a statement by Cardinal Kevin Farrell: \u201cAt 7:35 a.m. this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father.<\/p>\n
His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and His Church.\u201d Cardinal Farrell described him as a true disciple who championed the poor and marginalised and lived the Gospel with fidelity and courage.<\/p>\n
The first pope from South America and the first Jesuit pontiff, Pope Francis\u2014born Jorge Mario Bergoglio\u2014was widely seen as the \u201cPeople\u2019s Pope.\u201d He was known for his humility, progressive stance on social issues, and efforts to reform the Church.<\/p>\n
He made international headlines in 2013 when he said of gay clergy, \u201cIf a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge them?\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite this, his stance came under scrutiny in 2024 after he endorsed Dignitas Infinita, reaffirming Church opposition to gender reassignment, surrogacy, abortion, and euthanasia. He also faced backlash over reports alleging he used a homophobic slur behind closed doors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church and Bishop of Rome since 2013, has died at the age of 88, the Vatican confirmed early this morning. His death was announced in a statement by Cardinal Kevin Farrell: \u201cAt 7:35 a.m. this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3550,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[2297,446,2296,1048,1779],"class_list":["post-3549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-religion","tag-championed","tag-confirmation","tag-illness","tag-marginalization","tag-prolonged"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3549"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3552,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3549\/revisions\/3552"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}