Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church since 2013, who advocated for the rights of Palestinians, died on Monday, Cardinal Kevin Ferrell, the Vatican camerlengo, announced. He was 88.

“At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the home of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and of his Church,” Farrell said in the announcement.

As the spiritual leader of nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics, who constitute the biggest of the three major branches of Christianity, Francis endeared himself to Muslims around the world for his repeated calls for a ceasefire during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which has killed over 51,200 people, mostly women and children, between October 2023 and April 2025.

“He was very outspoken and very consistent in that call for a ceasefire, for an end to violence, for robust humanitarian aid to reach those in Gaza. He continued to hold the position that the Palestinians have a right to equality and self-determination,” says Dr Jordan Denari Duffner, a US-based expert of religious studies who has written books on Catholic-Muslim dialogue, Islamophobia and anti-Muslim discrimination.

“The pope was a really important moral voice, reminding Catholics in particular of what our faith tells us about pushing for justice and pushing for peace,” she tells TRT World.

The Vatican has stood for a two-state solution since long before Francis assumed the papal authority. For example, Pope St. John Paul II, who headed the Roman Catholic Church from 1978 to 2005, was anything but reticent in expressing his sympathy towards the Palestinian cause. 

The Roman Catholic Church formally recognised the State of Palestine as per its pre-1967 borders in February 2013—a move that “disappointed” the Israeli foreign ministry.

Duffner, who is currently writing a book on Pope Francis and Islam, says the late pontiff was driven by his belief that the Palestinians were suffering injustice and deserved equality with their Israeli neighbours.

Popes are usually careful about taking sides in global conflicts, but Francis never pulled any punches when it came to expressing his position on Israel's indiscriminate bombing of Gaza for 16 months.

He often expressed his pain thinking of Gaza “of such cruelty, to the machine-gunning of children, to the bombing of schools and hospitals... How much cruelty!”

In the early days of Israel’s genocidal war, Francis called for an immediate ceasefire. “Please stop the attacks and the weapons,” he said, adding that war led only to the “death and suffering of innocent people”.

“War is always a defeat! Every war is a defeat!”

When an Israeli air strike hit the Greek Orthodox Porphyrius Church in Gaza on October 19, 2023, killing at least 18 Palestinian civilians who had taken shelter there, Francis demanded that Israel bring the war to a swift end.

“I am thinking of the serious humanitarian situation in Gaza… I reiterate my appeal for spaces to be opened, for humanitarian aid to continue to arrive…”

As Israel rained down missiles across Gaza, Pope Francis decided to establish direct communication with the besieged Christian community in Gaza. He would make nightly phone calls to the Holy Family Church, the only Catholic church in Gaza, to offer prayers and words of encouragement to both Christians and Muslims sheltering within its walls.

Father Gabriel Romanelli, the Gaza parish priest, said the besieged community drew strength from the pope’s unwavering support amid shortages of water, food and medical supplies.

The parish sheltered under 500 people, including three priests, five nuns and 58 disabled people. Most of the people who took shelter in the parish were Muslims and children in need of special care.

Duffner says Francis would keep in touch with the Gaza priest and congregation via daily phone calls “even from his hospital bed”.

“Catholic teaching is really clear that any time innocent people are being targeted, when food is being withheld, when there’s not adequate shelter, when medical facilities are being destroyed, we have a responsibility to speak up really forcefully in defence of those who are suffering,” she says.

“I think Pope Francis really lived that out in the way that he responded to the situation in Gaza and then to the broader injustices that we see in Israel and Palestine,” she says.

Was Francis unusually pro-Palestine?

The pope also met the relatives of Palestinians who were killed by Israel in Gaza. “This is no longer war, this is terrorism,” the pope remarked after the meeting.

Shireen Halil, a Palestinian and Christian woman from Bethlehem who was part of the group that called on the pontiff, told the press that she and others felt “astonished” by the extent of information Pope Francis had about the Gaza war.

Duffner says there has been “a lot of continuity” through Francis (2013-2025) and his immediate predecessors—Pope Benedict XVI (2005-2013), Pope John Paul II (1978-2005) and Pope Paul VI (1963-1978)—on the issue of Palestine.

“Since the 1940s, the Vatican has held the position that the Palestinians deserve self-determination and a state of their own. I think this is something that is run through not just Francis's papacy, but also through his predecessors’,” she says.

However, Francis stands apart in terms of his vocal advocacy for the Palestinians mainly because he lived through Israel’s war that wreaked “unprecedented level of violence” on Gaza.

“In some ways, Francis’s rhetoric has had to be more straightforward and forceful than his predecessors, simply because of the situation that we’re in.”