# Pope Francis Pope Francis (Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 1936-2025) was the first Jesuit pope and the first from the Americas, elected in March 2013. His pragmatic, reform-minded papacy drew sustained opposition from the Catholic traditionalist right, making him the antagonist around whom the Catholic-right strand of [[The Octopus]] frame organizes. ## Papacy Francis emphasized pastoral mercy, migrants, and the environment, and acted on several fronts that enraged traditionalists: he restricted the [[Latin Mass]] (Traditionis Custodes, 2021), canonized [[Óscar Romero]] in 2018, and in 2017 intervened in the [[Knights of Malta]] governance crisis to force the resignation of its traditionalist Grand Master. [[Steve Bannon]] publicly cast the Jesuit reformer pope as an enemy of tradition and backed his conservative critics; [[Carlo Maria Viganò]]'s schism was the radical endpoint of that opposition. ## Death and succession Francis died on April 21, 2025 (Easter Monday), age 88. The conclave of May 2025 elected Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, an American, who took the name Pope Leo XIV. ## Epistemic status Francis's reforms, his clashes with traditionalists, and his 2025 death and succession are documented. His role in the Octopus frame is as a real institutional antagonist of the Catholic right, not as an actor in any conspiracy; the "Jesuit vs. traditionalist" wedge is best understood as a genuine intra-Church conflict that political operatives have sought to exploit. ## See also - [[The Octopus]] - [[Carlo Maria Viganò]] - [[Latin Mass]] - [[Second Vatican Council]] - [[Óscar Romero]]