Pope Francis, in a white and gold cassock

Pope Francis (17 December 1936 – 21 April 2025) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 2013 until his death. He was the first pope from the Society of Jesus (the Jesuit Order), the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first born or raised outside of Europe since the 8th-century Syrian pope Gregory III.