From the outset, it was a different papacy.
The first Latin American Pope, the first Jesuit and the first to take the name Francis.
It made news around the world in 2013.
He was Francis the informal; asking those who cheered his election as Pope to bless him before he blessed them.
There is a story widely told that the first night that Pope Francis walked the corridors of the Vatican, he started switching the lights off.
He pointed out that the electricity being used, could run a small village in Argentina.
Whether hearsay or a true representation of events that night, it demonstrates a modesty in the man that continued throughout his papacy.
His rejection of status symbols was to the fore from the outset.
After his first greeting to the world from St Peter's, Pope Francis took a coach to the guesthouse where he had been staying with the other Cardinals during the conclave - Casa Santa Marta in the Vatican City.
The following morning, he declined the papal limousine. Instead, he was driven to pray at the Basilica of St Mary Major in a Ford Focus.
Back in his home country of Argentina, people were less surprised by his modesty.
In 1998, when he became Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he lived in an apartment downtown instead of the Archbishop’s Palace.
His humble upbringing remained part of his life.
Born in December 1936, to Italian immigrants Jorge Bergoglio was the eldest of five.
His father Mario was employed by the railways as an accountant, his mother Regina Sivori stayed at home to raise the children.
As a young man, Jorge underwent surgery to remove part of one of his lungs due to infection.
Over 50 years later, that surgery would become a topic of conversation at the Conclave to elect the successor of Benedict XVI’s.
There were efforts to use it to undermine the election of Cardinal Bergoglio.
In a book five years after the Conclave, Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga - who supported Bergoglio’s candidacy for Pope - said someone spread the word in Santa Marta that Bergoglio was ill, that he was without one lung.
Remembering Pope Francis
Cardinal Maradiaga put the question Bergoglio, who confirmed that he had part of his lung removed due to cysts but that apart from some sciatica, he had no other major health problems.
So, that was one question off the list.
Another talking point during the Conclave centered around the military dictatorship in Argentina from 1976 to 1983.
As a young priest, Jorge Bergoglio was suspected of not doing enough to protect Jesuits Father Franz Jalics and Father Orlando Yorio who were kidnapped by the military.
They went missing for five months in 1976 while Fr Bergoglio (then in his 30s) was the provincial superior of the Society of Jesus in Argentina, a position he held for six years.
Their detention led some human rights organisations to accuse Bergoglio of handing over the two Jesuit priests to the military junta.
However, Jalics went on to absolve Pope Francis.
In a statement issued in 2013, he said they were not denounced by Fr Bergoglio.
He said they were kidnapped for their connection to a catechist who had worked alongside them for a while and "later joined the guerillas".
Other interesting nuggets from his past emerged after he became Pope.
He revealed in 2013, that he worked as a nightclub bouncer in his native Argentina. This was greeted with surprise and amusement by many.
A reflection of the understanding he had of the world outside the Catholic Church and of the public.
This was evident during the 1990s when he was becoming ever more popular in Latin America.
As Archbishop of Buenos Aires — a diocese with more than three million inhabitants — he conceived of a missionary project based on communion and evangelization.
He had four main goals: open and brotherly communities, an informed laity playing a lead role, evangelization efforts addressed to every inhabitant of the city, and assistance to the poor and the sick.
He asked priests and lay people to work together.
In 2001, he was created a Cardinal by Pope John Paul II. He was viewed as a successor to the papacy following the death of John Paul in 2005.
It is reported that he requested cardinals not vote for him to prevent the conclave from delaying the election.
Following the resignation of Pope Bendict XVI In 2013, the man who was viewed as someone who straddled the divide between the Jesuits and between liberals and conservatives in the church was elected.
As Pope, Francis rejected the traditional lavish papal apartment and appointed a council of eight cardinals from around the globe to restructure the Vatican administration and tackle corruption - they began by closing questionable accounts in the Vatican bank.
During his first holy week ceremony, Pope Francis horrified traditionalists by washing the feet of women and Muslims.
He broke new ground by establishing a commission on child protection which included survivor advocates like the Irish woman Marie Collins.
She resigned three years later, citing frustration with some officials in the Roman Curia but acknowledged the Pope’s support to all the recommendations of the commission up to that point.
Marie Collins said she found "the attitude of a small number in the Vatican’s curia resistant to the work of the commission." She said it had not been co-operative.
As Pope, Francis took steps to empower women in the Catholic Church
In 2020, he named the first woman to a managerial position in the Vatican’s most important office, the Secretariat of State.
He changed the laws of the Catholic church to formally allow women to give readings from the Bible during Mass, act as altar servers and distribute communion.
They remained barred from becoming deacons or priests.
He was also more welcoming than his predecessors to the LGBT+ community. In 2013, he said gay people should not be marginalised but integrated into society.
He reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church’s position that homosexual acts were sinful, but homosexual orientation was not.
"If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?"
His view that same-sex couples should be protected by civil union laws in 2020 was welcomed.
He later approved blessings for same sex couples and signed a doctrine office document allowing transgender people to be baptized and serve as godparents.
But in latter years he had to apologise for using extremely derogatory language about gay men.
His first trip since Covid-19 pandemic ground the world to a halt, which included the closure of churches, was to Iraq.
Despite rising Covid-19 virus figures in Iraq, Pope Francis went ahead with the visit in March 2021, under tight security.
This trip sought to offer hope to Iraq's minority Christian community; devastated by wars and repression by Islamic State insurgents.
In one of the most significant moments of the trip Pope Francis met Iraq’s Shia Leader the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
The meeting was held behind closed doors, following which, the al-Sistani office released a statement that said religious authorities have a role in protecting Iraq’s Christians.
The Shia Leader affirmed his concern that Christian citizens should live like all Iraqis in peace and security, and with their full constitutional rights.
Pope Francis also sought to give hope to Irish Catholics when he visited this country in 2018 for the World Meeting of Families.
It was the first visit by a Pope since John Paul II in 1979, who received an overwhelming reception by crowds.
However, in 40 years, the Catholic Church had been rocked to its core. Few in 1979 could have envisaged Ireland of 2018.
The scandals of clerical sex abuse, the legacy of Mother and Baby Homes and Magdeline Launderies left a weary, distrustful, angry society in their wake.
The country had transformed into one where the influence of the Catholic Church had declined.
Referendums on marriage equality and abortion had just passed.
Ahead of the visit, the Pope wrote a 2,000-word letter to Catholics in which he condemned the crime of sexual abuse by priests and subsequent cover-ups and demanded accountability in response to new revelations in the US of decades of misconduct by the church.
He also posted a video message in which he expressed hope that his visit would help grow unity and reconciliation among Christians on the island of Ireland.
During the mass in the Phoenix Park, Pope Francis asked for forgiveness.
Reading from a handwritten note in Spanish he said: "We ask forgiveness for the abuses in Ireland, abuses of power and conscience; sexual abuses on the part of qualified members of the church.
"In a special way, we ask for forgiveness for all the abuses committed in various types of institutions run by religious men and women and other members of the church ... we ask forgiveness for some members of the hierarchy who did not take care of these painful situations and kept silent - we ask forgiveness."
While the trip to Ireland is unlikely to have been the easy for Pope Francis, many view his call for forgiveness as courageous.
He also called for forgiveness when he visited Canada in 2022 on what he called a 'Pilgrimage of Penance’.
Schools, funded by the Canadian government and administered by the Catholic Church from the late 1800s into the late 20th Century, sought to erase the culture and language of indigenous people and succeeded in most cases.
It emerged through Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission that there was severe abuse and neglect at the residential boarding schools and the trauma had trickled through the generations.
While Pope Francis sought to rectify the wrongs of the past through those apologies, his Pontificate also looked to the future.
He reformed Vatican finances and laws around the reporting of child abuse and challenged Catholics to think about the future of the church.
The cumbersomely named ‘Synod of Synodality’ set out to listen to congregations in dioceses worldwide, in order to explore the church’s mission.
It turned the idea of ‘being church’ on its head.
Rather than the top-down hierarchical modal that the Catholic Church has had for centuries, the Synodal process went from the bottom up, beginning with the views of lay people in dioceses.
Most people credited Pope Francis for allowing conversations and self-reflection to take place.
He was also commended for his views on climate change, outlined in his landmark Laudato Si’ encyclical - a 184-page document published in 2015.
It was astutely published six months ahead of the UN climate conference in Paris, at which world leaders would set clear targets to limit global warming.
In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis brought a moral perspective to the issue of climate change.
He pointed out that in order to improve the lives of the poor, they needed to live in conditions that they could flourish and survive.
The Pope also called-out individualism and instant gratification as route causes for environmental degradation of our ‘common home’.
"We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather one complex crisis which is both social and environmental." he stated.
He was outspoken on many issues throughout his Pontificate including war and injustice.
The people of Ukraine were constantly in his prayers following the Russian invasion of their country and while he offered to meet President Vladimir Putin early in the war, he was told it was not a good time.
When the war in Gaza broke out, Rev. Gabriel Romanelli, the parish priest of the Church of the Holy Family - the only Roman Catholic church in Gaza – said Pope Francis maintained near-daily contact with this church throughout.
Occasionally, he would video call them or send a text message.
Pope Francis had good relationships with many leading figures around the world.
Sources say that he and President Michael D Higgins had a strong relationship because they held similar views on matters of social justice and this led them to become good friends.
In January 2023, when the funeral of Emeritus Pope Benedict was held in St Peter’s Square, the President of Ireland did not attend the funeral because heads of state were not formally invited.
Ambassadors of the Holy See represented their countries and in Ireland’s case, that was the newly appointed Ambassador Frances Collins.
She was one of several women ambassadors to the Holy See in attendance at the funeral as a result of Pope Francis seeking more female representation in the Vatican.
As the first Pope to resign in hundreds of years, all eyes were on Rome to see how the funeral of Emeritus Pope Benedict would be handled.
There was a dignified funeral mass in St Peter’s Square led by his successor.
Numbers in attendance were far lower than Pope John Paul II, but that was to be expected. It is expected that Pope Francis’s funeral in contrast, will attract huge crowds.
It is testament to Argentinian who took the position of Pope as increasing numbers in the Western World questioned the validity of the Church that he led.
He faced an arduous task in the Vatican to many things in order while critics lambasted him for what they viewed as his liberal approach to Catholic doctrine.
In his efforts to reform the social and economic policies of the Vatican Pope Francis had his critics, but he was admired by people of all faiths worldwide
In recent years, he was prone to raspatory infections and around the time of his trip to Canada started to use a wheelchair due to a strained knee ligament.
He acknowledged that his weeklong Canadian pilgrimage was 'a test' that showed, he needed to slow down and one day possibly retire.
However, his determination was to continue in the role while he was fit and able to do so.
Yesterday, Pope Francis greeted crowds gathered in St Peter's Square, saying "Happy Easter," in a weak voice from his wheelchair.
That was his first public address after leaving hospital, where he had a lengthy stay while being treated for pneumonia. It was to be his final public appearance.
A man of the people, he will be remembered most for his compassion, his courage and his humility.
