Pope died of stroke, heart attack, coma, Vatican says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis died April 21 after suffering a stroke and heart attack, said the director of Vatican City State’s department of health services. The pope had also gone into a coma.

“I certify that His Holiness Francis, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on December 17, 1936, resident of Vatican City, Vatican citizen, passed away at 7:35 a.m. on 4/21/2025 in his apartment at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, Vatican City, from: cerebral stroke, coma, irreversible cardiovascular collapse,” said the statement, signed by the director, Dr. Andrea Arcangeli, and published by the Vatican press office. 

The doctor said the pope also had a history of: “a previous episode of acute respiratory failure due to polymicrobial bilateral pneumonia; multiple bronchiectases; arterial hypertension; and type II diabetes.”

A heart monitor or ECG was used to ascertain his death, that is, that there was no longer any heart activity, he wrote on the signed declaration.

The doctor also read the statement aloud during a special prayer service that began at 8 p.m. local time April 21 in the late pope’s residence, the Domus Sanctae Marthae. 

U.S. Cardinal Kevin J. Farrell, chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church, presided over the rite, which included the formal verification of the pope’s death, the placement of his body in a coffin, and its transfer to the chapel on the first floor of his residence. The pope died in his third-floor apartment at 7:35 a.m. April 21.

Others present at the closed-door ceremony included Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, dean of the College of Cardinals; the late pope’s aides, assistants and members of the papal household; Dr. Arcangeli; and Dr. Luigi Carbone, deputy director of the Vatican’s health department and the pope’s personal physician. 

This was the first of three rites that are divided into three “stations” based on the place they occur: “at home, in the Vatican basilica and at the burial place,” according to the “Ordo Exsequiarum Romani Pontificis” (“Funeral Rites of the Roman Pontiff”). There will be separate services for transferring the body to St. Peter’s Basilica, the funeral, the burial and the memorial Masses that follow the funeral for the next eight days.

The Vatican press office confirmed that, according to instructions guiding what happens after the death of a pope, the funeral and burial should take place “between the fourth and sixth day after death,” which would be between April 25 and 27.

The exact date will be determined at a meeting of all the cardinals able to reach the Vatican immediately after the papal death. The first meeting was being held at 9 a.m. April 22 in the Vatican Synod Hall.

The press office said the coffin would probably be brought to St. Peter’s Basilica April 23 for public viewing and prayer before the funeral. Instead of lying on a catafalque, that is, a kind of decorated platform, the body will be placed inside a zinc-lined coffin, which will remain open until the night before the funeral, which will be celebrated by Cardinal Re.

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