Pope Francis suffered a stroke about an hour after getting out of bed Monday morning and d!ed within minutes — after spending his final days fighting “to the end to be with his people,’’ sources said
The pontiff had been ailing for several months, battling serious respiratory infections that left him with “a swollen face, almost deformed,’’ according to the Argentinian outlet La Nacion.
But he insisted on soldiering on, including when he visited inmates at a prison in Rome on Holy Thursday, sources told the outlet’s Italian-born Vatican correspondent, Elisabetta Pique.
After the jail visit, Francis was asked by a reporter, “How are you living this Easter?’’ the outlet said.
The frail pope replied, “I live this Easter as I can’’ — speaking “with great effort and difficulty.’’
He did not partake in the papal tradition of humility: washing the feet of 12 people, a re-enactment of what the Bible says Jesus did on Holy Thursday.
He also skipped presiding over Easter Mass at the Vatican on Sunday, although he did appear on the balcony to give a blessing — and at one point met US Vice President JD Vance.
Francis awoke around 6 a.m. Monday appearing “reasonably well,’’ sources told Pique, who wrote a 2014 biography on Il Papa called, “Pope Francis: Life and Revolution: A Biography of Jorge Bergoglio.”
But after about an hour, he suffered the stroke, which led to a coma and ultimately “irreversible cardiocirculatory collapse,’’ the Vatican announced.
Dr. Andrea Arcangeli, head of the Vatican’s health department, revealed the pontiff’s official cause of death and noted that in addition to the cerebral stroke, the 88-year-old pope was suffering from pneumonia in both lungs, which caused episodes of respiratory insufficiency.
Arcangeli also noted that Francis had type 2 diabetes and hypertension.
The pope’s de.ath followed more than two months of being in and out of hospitals in Rome, where he fought respiratory infections and at times required high flows of supplemental oxygen and at least one emergency blood transfusion during his initial 38-day stay at Gemelli Hospital in the Italian capital.
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