“We express our condolences to the millions of Catholics worldwide who today lose a highly important religious leader. We join in the sorrow and mourning for this loss,” said Rui Tavares in Olhão, Faro district.
The spokesperson for Livre was responding to the death of Pope Francis at the age of 88, during a visit to the Natural Park of Ria Formosa, at Quinta de Marim.
According to Rui Tavares, the Pope’s death is also a loss for all who admired his civic and humanitarian work.
“We do not forget that one of his first gestures as Pope was to visit the island of Lampedusa, in southern Italy, and the refugees,” he noted.
Additionally, he stressed, “he maintained, until the end of his life, concern for the victims of the attacks in the Gaza Strip, always defending peace and humanitarian harmony.”
“It is a great loss of someone whose life was guided by service and who, as a religious leader, brought to the Catholic Church a peripheral dimension, a very refined vision of leadership that transcends the religious phenomenon,” he concluded.
Pope Francis passed away today at the age of 88, following a 12-year papacy marked by the fight against sexual abuse, wars, and a pandemic.
Born in Buenos Aires on December 17, 1936, Francis was the first Jesuit to reach the leadership of the Catholic Church.
He was hospitalized for 38 days due to bilateral pneumonia and was discharged on March 23. His last public appearance was on Easter Sunday, at the Vatican, the day before his death.
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