RIP, Pope Francis
Plus, two aspects of his death: do the elderly hang on for special events? what about frequency of papal deaths?
From the Holy See Press Office: Declaration of the Director of the Holy See Press Office, Matteo Bruni, 21.04.2025
At 9.47 this morning, His Eminence Cardinal Kevin Joseph Farrell, Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church, announced with sorrow the death of Pope Francis, with these words:
“Dearest brothers and sisters, with deep sorrow I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis.
At 7.35 this morning the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father. His entire life was devoted to service to the Lord and His Church.
He taught us to live the values of the Gospel with fidelity, courage and universal love, especially in favour of the poorest and most marginalized.
With immense gratitude for his example as a true disciple of the Lord Jesus, we commend the soul of Pope Francis to the infinite merciful love the One and Triune God”.
To cement this, the X account was changed to this:
It should be interesting how rapidly that changes once a new one is installed.
Vatican News: Pope Francis has died on Easter Monday aged 88
The Pope was admitted to the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic Hospital on Friday, February 14, 2025, after suffering from a bout of bronchitis for several days.
Pope Francis’ clinical situation gradually worsened, and his doctors diagnosed bilateral pneumonia on Tuesday, February 18.
After 38 days in hospital, the late Pope returned to his Vatican residence at the Casa Santa Marta to continue his recovery.
In 1957, in his early 20s, Jorge Mario Bergoglio underwent surgery in his native Argentina to remove a portion of his lung that had been affected by a severe respiratory infection.
As he aged, Pope Francis frequently suffered bouts of respiratory illnesses, even cancelling a planned visit to the United Arab Emirates in November 2023 due to influenza and lung inflammation.
In April 2024, the late Pope Francis approved an updated edition of the liturgical book for papal funeral rites, which will guide the funeral Mass which has yet to be announced.
As can be noted from the series of events from this year (and from the past), Pope Francis’s death was not a surprise.
He had been ailing for some time, not just this year. He had not been able to celebrate Mass, being seated, often in a wheelchair.
From last year: Why doesn’t Pope Francis celebrate Mass?
Since about this time last year [2023], the Pope has “presided” at the Vatican’s major liturgical celebrations. That is, he sits to the side, while another prelate, at the altar, actually celebrates the Mass. The Pope may deliver a homily, impart his blessing to the congregation, and offer some remarks after the conclusion of the Mass. But he is not the celebrant, nor even a concelebrant.
….
There are good reasons why Pope Francis is no longer standing at the altar to celebrate Mass. His health is slipping, his knees are painful, he travels around the Vatican in a wheelchair, he needs assistance to move even a few steps.
The piece was partly a critique of Pope Francis [I cut out those bits].
I attend a parish with a deacon who has several infirmities, and he rarely can participate with the priests and other deacons. He usually sits in the front pew, dedicated to those with disabilities. This deacon recently participated in the Holy Week Tenebrae (morning prayer) we had on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, and his difficulties were apparent.
This morning, when I went into the church, there was no 7:30am Mass (the priests need a break from the Holy Week and Easter gauntlet). The deacon was sitting in that front pew. Many of us were there to pray for the repose of the soul of Pope Francis. I prayed a rosary for him.
Back to Pope Francis — as he was aging, especially these last two years, his difficulties were very obvious.
The above picture from CNA’s coverage of Pope Francis’s Easter Blessing has a context: he gave a blessing, but somebody else read the full address:
Catholic News Agency: Full text of Pope Francis’ blessing ‘urbi et orbi’ for Easter 2025
On Easter Sunday 2025, Pope Francis did not deliver his speech in person, though he briefly greeted the faithful with a brief “Brothers and Sisters, Happy Easter”.
The pope’s traditio, “urbi et orbi,” was read by Archbishop Diego Ravelli, the Master of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations, as the 88-year-old pontiff, still convalescing, was present but physically limited. Pope Francis briefly blessed the crowd after the message was read.
More Catholic Media Coverage
The Pillar: Pope Francis is dead at 88
Catholic News Agency: BREAKING: Pope Francis dies at 88, ending historic pontificate marked by mercy and reform
Catholic News Service at USCCB: Global pastor: In word and deed, pope preached mercy, outreach
The Pillar: Sede vacante: What happens now, and who is in charge?
The Pillar: The complex ‘hagan lio’ of Francis’ many legacies
The Pillar: World reacts after Vatican announces pope’s death
Some mortality-related questions
Pope Francis’s death on Easter Monday brought up two immediate mortality questions:
Do the dying elderly often “hang on” for special days, and then die immediately after?
Are we in a time of frequent papal deaths?
On dying people “hanging on” for special events
Against: WashU, 2004: Holidays, special events have no proven effect on the timing of death
The idea that dying people hang on to life in order to celebrate one more birthday or holiday has no firm scientific basis, according to behavioral medicine researchers in the School of Medicine.
“I’ve worked in hospitals since I was about 16 years old, and I’ve seen that people in medicine have a lot of very strongly held beliefs, like the idea that certain people hang on,” says Judith A. Skala, Ph.D., research associate in the Behavioral Medicine Center. “But none of the studies has convincingly established that the time of death can be postponed through force of will or hastened by loss of the desire to live.”
For: 2008, Basic and Applied Social Psychology: Postponing a Date with the Grim Reaper: Ceremonial Events and Mortality
Past research suggests that people are more likely to die after rather than before important ceremonial events (a death deferral effect). We replicated this finding in a sample based on more than 30 million decedents. In analyses in which we tracked deaths day by day, we analyzed four major events: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Day, and participants' birthdays. People were more likely to die just after rather than just before all four events. In addition, whereas people were less likely than usual to die on the exact days of Thanksgiving and Christmas, people were more likely than usual to die on the exact days of New Year's Day and their birthdays. Moderator analyses suggested that these effects reflected a will to live. For instance, effects for both Christmas and the birthday were much stronger for children than for adults.
One note from the above:
7To see if seasonal variation in death rates could explain our day-by-day findings for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day, we sampled the immediate periods surrounding these three major holidays. Specifically, we analyzed death rates from November 2 to 19, December 2 to 22, and January 4 to 23 (excluding the 15th of the month, for reasons noted in Study 4a). We observed only a trivial increase in death rates in November. We actually observed a decrease in death rates in January, which is consistent with Phillips et al.'s (2006) findings. For December, we did observe a clear seasonal effect. On average each day in December yielded 158 more deaths than the day that preceded it. However, our finding of a death deferral effect was highly significant even after controlling for daily increase, χ 2(1) = 24.72, p < .001. In fact, the magnitude of the death deferral effect in December was nearly five times larger than the seasonal effect. Finally, it is worth noting that seasonal effects cannot explain our findings for birthdays because we randomly sampled birthdays throughout the calendar year.
This made me wonder about the authors, what background they have — when I clicked on them to look at other publications, neither indicates they are at all familiar with the seasonality of deaths:
I marked off a few years in the above graph, but the main point is that the highest daily death rate in the U.S. is generally in January, and lowest around August. This is driven primarily by the death rate of the oldest people, from natural causes, not accidental deaths. The very high peaks you see, as with January 2018, are bad seasonal flu.
Some of the “dying right after Christmas" or NYE” stories are the normal “dying in winter” patterns you see above.
Easter isn’t related to the Northern Hemisphere pattern of winter-timed deaths, though Pope Francis did have his earlier bronchitis run-in back in February.
There is a much easier explanation for spikes in deaths immediately after significant events for somebody in poor health.
They overdid it.
I mean, come on.
Pope Francis was in poor health. He couldn’t give his full Urbi et Orbi speech, but only a short greeting and blessing. They still put him in the popemobile and paraded him around St. Peter’s Square, which probably was very tiring for him.
It’s not that he hung on until Easter and then died. It’s probably the extra activities of Easter that overstrained him.
To be sure, he decided to do all these things.
Because it was Easter.
That’s probably also what kills a lot of older people who “hang on” for a special celebration. It’s not so much that they “hung on” as that the excitement and extra activity did them in. And they were just fine with that. That’s what they wanted to do.
That would be difficult to distinguish, just looking at statistics.
On papal death frequency
The Pillar covered this somewhat before:
They have a chart with all the Popes where we know their ages, etc.
I had some fun with the data after Pope Benedict died:
Geeking Out in Memory of Pope Benedict - Papal Mortality!
So I got the very respectful post out of my system.
We now have an extra data point, but I don’t need to add the 88-year-old Pope Francis to those graphs. Let me do a different graph (later) because one friend commented about a bunch of Popes dying in her lifetime, which I thought not quite on the nose.
For one, I don’t think she was old enough for the 33-day papacy of Pope John Paul I.
The list of the 11 shortest-reigning popes[1] includes:
Pope Urban VII (September 15–September 27, 1590):[11] reigned for 13 calendar days,[a] died before consecration.
Pope Boniface VI (April, 896):[12] reigned for 16 calendar days
Pope Celestine IV (October 25–November 10, 1241):[13] reigned for 17 calendar days, died before consecration.
Pope Theodore II (December, 897):[14] reigned for 20 calendar days
Pope Sisinnius (January 15–February 4, 708):[15] reigned for 21 calendar days
Pope Marcellus II (April 9–May 1, 1555):[16] reigned for 22 calendar days
Pope Damasus II (July 17–August 9, 1048):[17] reigned for 24 calendar days
Pope Pius III (September 22–October 18, 1503):[18] reigned for 27 calendar days.
Pope Leo XI (April 1–April 27, 1605):[19] reigned for 27 calendar days
Pope Benedict V (May 22–June 23, 964):[20] reigned for 33 calendar days.
Pope John Paul I (August 26–September 28, 1978): reigned for 33 calendar days.[21]
She was born during one of the longest pontificates:
Including Peter, who was the first Bishop of Rome and the first pope, the list of the 11 longest-reigning popes[1] includes:
Saint Peter (30–64 AD or 33–67 AD): 34 years.
Pope Pius IX (1846–1878):[2] 31 years, 7 months and 23 days (11,560 days).
Pope John Paul II (1978–2005): 26 years, 5 months and 17 days (9,665 days)
Pope Leo XIII (1878–1903):[3] 25 years, 5 months and 1 day (9,281 days).
Pope Pius VI (1775–1799):[4] 24 years, 6 months and 15 days (8,962 days).
Pope Adrian I (772–795):[5] 23 years, 10 months and 25 days (8,729 days).
Pope Pius VII (1800–1823):[6] 23 years, 5 months and 7 days (8,560 days).
Pope Alexander III (1159–1181):[7] 21 years, 11 months and 24 days (8,029 days).
Pope Sylvester I (314–335):[8] 21 years, 11 months and 1 day (8,005 days).
Pope Leo I (440–461):[9] 21 years, 1 month, and 13 days. (7,713 days).
Pope Urban VIII (1623–1644):[10] 20 years, 11 months and 24 days (7,664 days).
We’ve been a bit spoiled in the modern era.
No, there haven’t been a huge number of papal deaths in our time. I will come back to this in a future post, but Pope Francis did not have a particularly short papacy, as per Axios:
The only thing special in recent years that Pope Benedict XVI resigned. If Benedict had not resigned and had managed to die in 2023 as occurred, we would not have had Pope Francis. And a decade would have been tacked onto Benedict’s reign.
I will revisit the papal longevity/mortality issues in a bit.
But in the meantime, pray for the repose of the soul of Pope Francis.
RIP.
May perpetual light shine upon him.
Amen.
I never understood why the Catholics elect such old and often poor-health clergy. Do you know the answer?