Pope Francis, the first Latin American pontiff, dies at age 88

Pope Francis has died. The first Jesuit pope and first Latin American pope has died, at age 88, after a 12-year papacy in which he advocated for the rights of migrants and the poor.

“On his first Sunday as pope, greeting the vast crowd in St. Peter’s Square and a global audience following on television and social media, Francis introduced a central theme of his pontificate: God’s mercy,” writes Gerard O’Connell for America magazine, the Jesuit publication. “He had first experienced this mercy in a quasi-mystical way at the age of 17 when he went to confession in a church in Buenos Aires and saw himself as a sinner to whom God showed mercy like Jesus had shown to Matthew, the tax collector—Miserando atque eligendo (‘Mercifully, he chose him’)….His insistence on mercy throughout his pontificate and his call to priests to always be merciful in the confessional drew opposition from some bishops, priests and others in the church who viewed morality, especially in sexual matters, in black-and-white terms.”

At times, Pope Francis earned some Catholics’ ire for his controversial decisions to allow priests to bless gay couples and for saying that transgender people can serve as godparents for the baptized and witnesses at weddings (though he cautioned that priests should use discretion if “there is a danger of scandal, undue legitimisation or disorientation in the educational sphere of the church community”). He also, in 2016, “suggested a path for Catholics who had remarried after a divorce to receive Communion under certain circumstances,” writes O’Connell, which resulted in outcry from cardinals who asked Pope Francis to publicly respond to their dubia—questions seeking clarification—which he refused to do.

Most recently, he had sparred with Vice President J.D. Vance, a Catholic convert, over the Trump administration’s choices pertaining to migrants.

The day before Pope Francis’ death, he had met with Vance at his residence, Domus Santa Marta, in a meeting that seemed aimed at mending fences. The Pope had criticized Vance’s invocation of ordo amoris as justification for the Trump administration’s policies toward migrants back in February: “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups….The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation. The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ (cf.Lk10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

In the past, Pope Francis described the building of the border wall as “not Christian,” to which President Donald Trump responded that the Pope was a “very political person” in 2016. (“I think that he doesn’t understand the problems our country has. I don’t think he understands the danger of the open border that we have with Mexico,” Trump added.)

Now, a conclave will be held to discern who the next pope will be, with the College of Cardinals voting in secret inside of the Sistine Chapel until a two-thirds vote is reached and white smoke is sent up.

Scenes from New York: Today I have but a humble pie recipe for those who observe Passover, for next year: Matzo crust with halva filling and macerated rhubarb topping. My friends and I hosted a joint Easter feast/Passover seder yesterday, and—along with lamb and saffron latkes and a million other things—I made this pie, which was a bit of a risk. Halva and matzo and rhubarb are all acquired tastes. But what a welcome palate cleanser after a heavy meal, and much better than traditional flourless chocolate cake, which can just be way too rich.

QUICK HITS

• Big news out of the Supreme Court early Saturday morning (more here):

BREAKING: The Supreme Court has blocked the Trump administration from deporting foreign nationals under the Alien Enemies Act. Thomas, Alito dissent. pic.twitter.com/SsigpMnPf9

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) April 19, 2025

• “Every great technological change has a destructive shadow, whose depths swallow ways of life the new order renders obsolete. But the age of digital revolution—the time of the internet and the smartphone and the incipient era of artificial intelligence—threatens an especially comprehensive cull. It’s forcing the human race into what evolutionary biologists call a ‘bottleneck’—a period of rapid pressure that threatens cultures, customs and peoples with extinction,” writes Ross Douthat in The New York Times. This “is made more complex by the fact that much of this extinction will seem voluntary. In a normal evolutionary bottleneck, the goal is surviving some immediate physical threat—a plague or famine, an earthquake, flood or meteor strike. The bottleneck of the digital age is different: The new era is killing us softly, by drawing people out of the real and into the virtual, distracting us from the activities that sustain ordinary life, and finally making existence at a human scale seem obsolete.”
• President Donald Trump has been “openly musing” about firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell before his term ends in May of next year, according to Bloomberg. Powell recently noted concern about tariffs contributing to rising inflation and said that the Federal Reserve would need to “wait for greater clarity before considering any adjustments to our policy stance” on interest rates.
• A U.S. citizen was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Arizona for 10 days before being released.
• “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, according to four people with knowledge of the chat,” reports The New York Times. 
• This episode of Just Asking Questions is a can’t-miss: