Updated on April 21, 2025, 12:00 p.m.
The church bells sounded in the Philippines and the national and spiritual leaders across Asia expressed pain on Monday, Pope Francis in mourning who died at the age of 88 after a papacy of 12 years.
The humble style and the care of the Argentinian pontiff for the poor resounded beyond his disciples in the Catholic Church. He had traveled a lot through Asia since he had become a leader of the 1.3 billion world Catholics in 2013.
During his mandate, Francis attracted large crowds in countries like the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Thailand where Muslims and Buddhists were in the religious majority and the Catholics were in the minority. He also visited South Korea, Japan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Timor-Leste and Singapore.
The Vatican announced that the Pope died on Monday at 7:35 am. He was hospitalized for 38 days from mid-February with respiratory problems that have turned into double pneumonia. He had suffered from a chronic lung disease as a young man.
The Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr described Pope Francis as the “best pope in my lifetime”, saying in an article on Facebook that he “put not only with wisdom but with a heart open to all, especially the poor and forgotten”.
The church bells penetrated through Manila on Monday. Almost 80% of the Philippins identify as Roman Catholic.
Francis visited the country in 2015 – two years after being elected to lead the Catholic Church, after the surprise resignation of Benoît XVI. It is estimated that 6 to 7 million faithful attended an outdoor mass in Manila during his visit.
The president of Timor-Leste, Jose Ramos-Horta, said on Monday that the death of the François, the first Latin America to be pope, had been a huge loss for the world, not only Christians.
“He leaves behind a deep heritage of humanity, justice, human fraternity, of a huge loss for the world, not only for Christians,” he told Reuters.
Francis was the first pope in three decades to visit Timor-Leste, the youngest nation and with Catholic predominance of Asia. This trip in 2024 also took him to Papua New Guinea-the only country in the Pacific region where he has ever traveled as a pope.
The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, expressed his sadness in a letter to the head of the Diplomatic Mission of the Vatican in India.
“His holiness Pope Francis devoted himself to the service of others … constantly revealing by his own actions how to live a simple but significant life. The best tribute we can pay is to be a warm person, serving others wherever and in all possible ways, “wrote the Dalai Lama.
Sunday, in the Pope’s Easter message, one day before his death, he made a special mention of the Myanmar, which is the earthquake in shock of March 28 which killed thousands.
“Meanwhile, let’s not fail to help the inhabitants of Myanmar, plagued by long years of armed conflict, who, with courage and patience, deal with the consequences of the devastating earthquake of sagaing,” said the message. “We pray for the victims and their loved ones.”
In Taiwan, the government has announced that it would send envoys to the funeral of the Pope and that the presidential office and the executive yuan will steal flags in half-mast for two days.
The Vatican is one of the only 12 countries to maintain formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan of Chinese income.
In China, the Xinhua news agency in China and public video surveillance briefly reported on Monday the death of the Pope with a sentence citing the Vatican’s announcement. There was no immediate official reaction.
In South Korea, the ruling parties and the main opposition parties expressed pain.
The Democratic Party of the Korean opposition called him “a friend to the poor”, and the power of power of the people in power declared that he would do his best to establish peace on the divided Korean peninsula, “remembering his words that” peace is not simply the absence of war, but the result of justice “.
Updated with the reaction of the Dalai Lama, the background of the Pope’s Easter message which mentioned the Myanmar.