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Pope Francis became the first pontiff born in the New World and in the Southern Hemisphere. Since the time of Pope Gregory III, a native of Syria, the Holy See had been occupied by priests exclusively of European origin for almost 1,500 years.
He was also the first pontiff in history to be chosen from among the Jesuits, who had always regarded the Roman See with some suspicion.
As pope, he made great efforts to overcome the millennia-old schism with the Eastern Orthodox Church. In recognition of this, for the first time since the Great Schism of 1054, the Patriarch of Constantinople was present at the installation of a new bishop of Rome.
In 2022, he became the first pope in more than a century to bury his predecessor, following the death of Benedict at the age of 95.
The pope has repeatedly called for peace. On October 2, 2022 — more than six months into the war in Ukraine — the pontiff addressed the Russian president publicly. In a sermon from a balcony above St. Peter’s Square, the pope called on Putin to “stop the spiral of violence and death” in Ukraine.
In 2023, he made a pilgrimage to South Sudan, asking the country’s leaders to end the conflict.
He has appointed more than 140 cardinals from outside Europe and bequeathed to his successor a church that is far more global in outlook than the one he inherited.
And to set an example, he has been a no-frills pope who has chosen to live not in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace with its Sistine Chapel, but in a modern house next door (which Pope John Paul II had built as a guest house).
He believed that everything else would be vanity.
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