In this chair
The first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas. Died 21 April 2025. Canonized Francisco and Jacinta at Fátima. The pope of the peripheries.
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Pope Francis
Bishop of Rome, 2013 – 2025
Signs of this pontificate
Wonders this archive keeps that belong to the years he sat, or that he himself stood before.
MarianChurch-approved
Our Lady of Fátima
Cova da Iria, Fátima1917
In 1917, in a hollow of pasture called the Cova da Iria, near the village of Fátima in Portugal, three shepherd children — Lúcia dos Santos, ten, and her cousins Francisco Marto, nine, and Jacinta Marto, seven — saw a lady brighter than the sun, six times, on the 13th of the month from May to October. She asked for the rosary every day, for the conversion of sinners, for devotion to her Immaculate Heart, and that a chapel be built. On 13 July she showed them hell and spoke of war and of Russia. On 13 October, before a crowd of tens of thousands standing in the rain, including reporters who had come to mock, the sun appeared to dance. Francisco and Jacinta died in the influenza. Lúcia lived until 2005 as a nun. The bishop of Leiria declared the apparitions worthy of belief on 13 October 1930.
MarianOpen / under study
Medjugorje
Medjugorje1981 – ongoing claims
The most visited unapproved apparition site in the world. Six young people claimed daily visions from 1981. In 2024 Rome issued a “nihil obstat”: the Holy See finds no contradiction of faith and morals in the spiritual fruits, but does not declare the apparitions supernatural.