It will be almost a year since the death of the prominent head of the Catholic Church – Pope Francis. The Holy Father passed away on April 21, 2025, almost a month after being released from a five-week hospital stay with double pneumonia. Francis died at 7:35 a.m. in his apartment in the residence of St. Martha in the Vatican. A Slovak clergyman spoke for Ján Tribula about the sign he gave to the faithful not only about his departure.
The death of two popes resonates in recent history: the aforementioned Francis and John Paul II. Pope Francis managed to bless people last year on Easter Sunday with the last remnants of his strength. It could be seen that it cost him all his strength and he lost his fight a day later – on Easter Monday.
Even Pope John Paul II was running out of life energy on Easter, who did not utter a single word in front of the gathered believers. As a result of a serious illness in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican on April 2, 2005, on the eve of the Feast of Divine Mercy, John Paul II. passed away. It was a holiday on the following Sunday after Easter Sunday, it also belonged to the Easter period.
It seems as if the Pope literally summoned and prayed for the unusual departure. Their last gestures were engraved in the hearts of believers all over the world. “In the Eastern churches, it is said that whoever dies in the octave of the resurrection, goes to heaven,” Bernard Bober, chairman of the Bishops’ Conference of Slovakia, stated in the Marquis’ report.
“I remember that when I was on Mount Tábor, it was mentioned that the Holy Father, now Paul VI, prayed for a very long time in the Church of the Transfiguration, and finally when he died, it was on August 6,” recalled Bober. It was precisely the church holiday of the Transfiguration of the Lord. “Whether he had an inkling, whether he knew that his hour would come on this particular date, we don’t know. But there are certain secrets that we don’t all need to know in advance.” he added humbly.
The new pope rewrote history
Pope Francis’ successor, Pope Leo XIV, led the Way of the Cross in Rome’s Colosseum on Good Friday, carrying the cross himself during all 14 stops. Around 30,000 worshipers gathered in front of the Roman monument to watch the ceremony. Leo is the second pope to carry a wooden cross throughout the Good Friday Way of the Cross. He followed Pope John Paul II, who carried the cross during the entire Way of the Cross between 1980 and 1994. PHOTO can be found in the gallery.
