Cardinals will meet on Tuesday to plan a funeral for Pope Francis - those who are currently in Rome have been invited to meet at 09:00 local time (08:00 BST) on Tuesday morning for the planning.

At this meeting they are expected to decide when the Pope's body will be moved into St Peter's Basilica before burial so the public can pay their respects. The Vatican had earlier on Monday said this transfer could happen as early as Wednesday morning.

Pope Francis's death triggers nine days of official mourning, called the Novendiales, with the funeral and burial typically happening between the fourth and sixth days after his death.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Pope Francis came to the papacy at a time when the Catholic Church was dealing with a reckoning over longstanding allegations of sexual abuse, which lingers to this day.

Juan Carlos Cruz Chellew, a survivor of abuse by a cleric in Chile, told BBC Newshour that Pope Francis was one of the few people in the church willing to listen to him.

Cruz spent a week with the Pope in the Vatican's Santa Marta guesthouse, where the pair forged a friendship over long conversations.

"He and I talked long hours about the situation and ever since, he started changing the attitude towards sexual abuse in the church," Cruz said, adding that their encounter made a "180 degree change" on him.

All 34 of Chile's bishops offered their resignations to the Pope after an emergency summit at the Vatican over the scandal - and the Pope accepted seven of them and later defrocked two other bishops and a priest.

"There's still so much to do, but I feel Pope Francis opened the floodgates of something that people wanted to keep in the dark," Cruz said.

"I'm really sad and I'm going to miss him a lot."

Requiems are being planned across the Philippines for Lolo Kiko - translated as "Grandpa Francis". Roman Catholics make up 80% of its population.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said yesterday that Pope Francis was the "best Pope of in my lifetime".

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Virma Simonette/BBC

Taiwan has said that it will send an envoy of an “appropriate level” to the funeral of Pope Francis.

The Vatican is one of only a handful of countries that still maintains formal diplomatic relations with diplomatically isolated Taiwan - whose government rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims.

Taiwanese presidents have attended historic events at the Vatican before. In 2013, president Ma Ying-jeou attended Pope Francis’s inaugural mass. And in 2005, president Chen Shui-bian attended the funeral of Pope John Paul II.

We’re expecting more details from Taiwan’s foreign ministry about their envoy at a press conference which is happening soon - we'll bring you the latest as it happens.

Pope Francis spoke many times about the conflict in Gaza and was in constant contact with a group of Palestinian Christians in the Gaza strip.

Father Gabriel Romanelli, a priest at the Latin-rite Church of the Holy Family in Gaza, told BBC Newshour that the pope called them every day for more than a year and a half to check on their safety - and even learned a few Arabic phrases.

Romanelli said he last spoke to the pope on Saturday: "He called us and give the blessing. He told us thanks for our prayers for him."

"It's not easy to live here," Romanelli said. "So as a pastor here, to feel the closeness to the Pope himself ... for us was a very clear and very strong sign of the mercy of the Lord and the encouragement to serve the Lord in His Church".

Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu
Reporting from Washington DC

Image source, BBC / Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu

Nina Nimwesiga Rutakyamirwa was overcome with emotion following news of the Pope’s death.

"When I heard about it, I cried," she tells me.

While visiting her sister in Washington DC, the two women decided to come to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to pray.

"We said let us go to the church and maybe when we are there, then we can get a relief. It's really paining."

The search for Pope Francis’s successor is top of mind for the Rutakyamirwa sisters, who are from Tanzania. The late pontiff made history as the first from the Global South. Some hope the next head of church would be in the same vein, this time from Africa, the region where the church is growing at its fastest. There has been no pope of African descent for over 1,500 years.

"That would be very different; I wish," said Landrada Leonce Rutakyamirwa. Nina agreed: "We do pray (for an African pope) but God is the one who knows the new pope we are going to get."

Image source, Getty Images

From the moment of his election, Francis indicated he would do things differently. He received his cardinals informally and standing - rather than seated on the papal throne.

On 13 March 2013, Pope Francis emerged on the balcony overlooking St Peter's Square.

Clad simply in white, he bore a new name which paid homage to St Francis of Assisi, the 13th Century preacher and animal lover.

He was determined to favour humility over pomp and grandeur. He shunned the papal limousine and insisted on sharing the bus taking other cardinals home.

The new Pope set a moral mission for the 1.2 billion-strong flock. "Oh, how I would like a poor Church, and for the poor," he remarked.

Iconic buildings around the world have marked the death of the Pope.

Image source, The Empire State Building/X

Image source, EPA

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, The Manila Cathedral/YouTube

A requiem mass has started at the Manila Cathedral, which Pope Francis visited in 2015 - his only trip to the Philippines.

The Manila Cathedral, located inside the old Spanish quarter of the Philippine capital, is the country's mother church.

Francis is well-loved in the South East Asia nation that is home to the world's third largest Roman Catholic population.

Nikos Papanikolaou
Reporting from Athens

The Archbishop of Athens and All Greece has expressed his "great sadness" after the Pope's death.

In a statement, Archbishop Ieronymos also referred to the pontiff's respect "for both the Church of Greece and the Greeks and Greece", and his "exemplary generosity regarding the Parthenon Marbles", as well as his contribution to the dialogue of the Churches.

He also pointed out that "he was a strong personality, dedicated to the prevalence of all the good and values ​​of man, as a creature of God," and added that "throughout his ministry, every humble brother, poor, immigrant, refugee, occupied a central position".

The Prime Minister of Greece, through a statement, wished "the legacy of understanding and love that Pope Francis leaves behind to find the best continuation" while noting that Pope Francis dedicated his life to peace, friendship and solidarity.

James Chater
Reporting from Sydney

Image source, EPA

Both Australia’s prime minister Anthony Albanese and the leader of the opposition, Peter Dutton, paused election campaigning on Tuesday morning following the Pope’s death.

Early voting in Australia’s election - scheduled for 3 May - began today.

At a service in Melbourne on Monday night, Albanese, a Catholic, said “the first Pope from the southern hemisphere was close to the people of Australia”.

A third televised debate this evening will go ahead as planned.

Australian flags above government buildings are being flown at half-mast today.

There are about 5 million Catholics in Australia, according to the last census in 2021 - about 20% of the population.

Will Grant
Latin America correspondent, reporting from Mexico City

Leaders across the region have expressed their condolences at the death of the first Latin American pope.

Latin America is home to some 40% of the world’s Catholics and most of them took great pride in having one of their own as head of the Catholic Church.

‘Papa Francisco’, as he was known in Spanish, was beloved by ordinary Latin Americans for his messages of solidarity with the region’s poor and most vulnerable.

In his native Argentina, President Javier Milei – a man with whom the Pope had serious ideological differences – has called seven days of national mourning.

Pope Francis will also be remembered fondly in nations with much smaller Catholic populations, particularly Cuba, where he played a crucial role in brokering a rapprochement between the US and the Cuban Government in 2014.

He visited the communist-run island in 2016 and prompted the then-Cuban President, Raul Castro, to quip that even he “might start praying again and return to the Catholic Church”.

The same year, he travelled to Mexico, where numbers of Catholics are dwindling. The Mexican President, Claudia Sheinbaum, has added her voice to those of other world leaders paying homage, calling Pope Francis “a humanist, a man who was always close to the most humble and the poor”.

But one Latin American country he did not visit during his papacy was the country of his birth, Argentina.

Although Argentines had long hoped for a visit, some believe he was reticent to return amid its deeply polarised politics for fear it would be exploited by both sides to stoke divisions.

Image source, Reuter

The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church, someone who Roman Catholics believe represents a direct line back to Jesus Christ.

Pope Francis's passing now triggers a centuries-old process to elect a new pontiff.

The new Pope has to be chosen by the College of Cardinals – a group of the Catholic Church’s most senior officials, who are all men, all appointed directly by bishop and who are usually all ordained bishops.

Some 135 are eligible to vote for the new Pope.

They will be summoned to a meeting at the Vatican and then to attend the election which is known as a conclave.

The election is held in strict secrecy inside the Sistine Chapel.

Individual cardinals vote for their preferred candidate until a winner is determined, a process which can take several days. In previous centuries, voting has gone on for weeks or months. Some cardinals have even died during conclaves.

The only clue about how the election is proceeding is the smoke that emerges twice a day from burning the cardinals' ballot papers. Black signals failure. If a white smoke emerges, it means a new Pope has been chosen.

• Read more about what happens next

Madeline Halpert
Reporting from New York

Image source, Getty Images

When the world learned of Pope Francis's death on Monday morning, a cardinal with longstanding ties to the US was the one to break the news.

This morning, Irish-American Cardinal Kevin Farrell took on one of his biggest roles yet: the "camerlengo", or the person who runs the Vatican after the death or resignation of a pope.

Pope Francis nominated the cardinal for the role in 2019, which Farrell will hold during the "Apostolica Sedes Vacans", the period between the death or resignation of a pope until the election of the next pontiff.

Born in 1947 in Dublin, Farrell attended the University of Salamanca in Spain and the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, according to the Vatican.

The 77-year-old spent more than 30 years working for churches in the US. Farrell was appointed Bishop of Dallas in 2007 until Pope Francis asked him in 2016 to serve as the leader of the Vatican's new department responsible for the pastoral care of families, raising him to the rank of cardinal.

As camerlengo, Farrell will be tasked with making arrangements for the conclave, which will decide the next pontiff, and preside over the certification of Francis's death.

A seal has been placed on the door of the Pope's official residence at the Vatican this evening.

It is part of a process where a cardinal, known in this case as a camerlengo, locks and seals the Pope's personal residence with red ribbon and covers it in wax.

In the past, this was in apartments in the Apostolic Palace. But Francis lived in a small suite in the Vatican guesthouse known as Santa Marta.

Olha Kalmykova
BBC News Ukrainian, reporting from the Vatican

Pope Francis made peace a central theme of his prayers, especially after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Time and again, he called for an end to the fighting, expressed sympathy for Ukrainians, and sought to use his influence to encourage dialogue.

But his approach was not without controversy. One of the first came during the traditional Good Friday procession at Rome’s Colosseum in 2022, when he arranged for both a Ukrainian and a Russian to carry the cross together.

Some praised the gesture as a symbol of unity; others, particularly in Ukraine, criticised it as a false equivalence between victim and aggressor.

The late Pope tried to position the Vatican as a neutral platform for peace talks. But in 2024, his remark that Ukraine should "have the courage to raise the white flag" was interpreted by some as a suggestion that Ukraine should surrender. The Vatican later clarified that he had meant negotiation, not capitulation.

Despite these controversies, Francis remained deeply engaged with Ukraine. He hosted President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Vatican, met frequently with Ukrainian bishops, and helped broker the release of Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilians – efforts warmly acknowledged by Kyiv’s leaders in their tributes today.

Sakshi Venkatraman
Reporting from New York

Image source, BBC / Sakshi Venkatraman

People from all over the world have been filtering in and out of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Midtown Manhattan

Mourners lit candles under a central display, which features a photo of the Pope, a chalice, and an empty chair that symbolises “sede vacante,” the period of time when there is no pope.

Others cried and prayed while they sat on the pews.

“When we are in any town, we always visit the church,” Andrea Sucha tells me.

Andrea, who is visiting New York from Slovenia, thinks it’s especially meaningful that this happened on the final day of her trip to the US, the day after Easter Sunday.

“It was meant to be,” she said.

Pope Francis visited St Patrick’s in 2015 on a trip to the US where he led evening prayers at the church and spoke against clergy sex abuse scandals. While in New York, he also addressed the UN and visited a Harlem elementary school.

The BBC has been speaking with mourners across the US. You can watch some of their reactions in the video below:

Alice Hutton, BBC News
Reporting from Boston

Image source, BBC / Alice Hutton

Mourners at Boston's Cathedral of the Holy Cross tell the BBC that it was Pope Francis's compassion towards LGBT people they most admired.

Anna, a 20-something immigrant from the Philippines, says: "When he became a pope, I became more open and accepting."

Mary, 70, and Tom, 71, were visiting from Chicago to watch their daughter run today's Boston Marathon. They stopped by the church to "say a prayer for the Pope".

"We have a gay son, so that was important that he at least reached out," says Mary. "We hope that somebody that replaces him has the same values... to be more inclusive, just more human."

Beata, 70-year-old Polish immigrant attending mass with her granddaughter says: "My daughter is a lesbian, and I'm so happy this Pope is not against gay (people)."

Francis, who once commented "Who am I to judge" gay people, apologised last year after reports emerged that he used extremely derogatory language towards gay men.

Boston's position as a major centre of US Catholic life began more than 100 years ago, with an influx of Irish escaping famine in the 19th Century.

The Archdiocese of Boston - which today includes about 1.8 million people - garnered intense media attention in the early 2000s following the Boston Globe's investigation into widespread sexual abuse by clergy.

Mayeni Jones
BBC Africa correspondent

Image source, Reuters

Africa as a whole has the fastest growing number of Catholics anywhere in the world.

The number of Catholics in Africa went from 272 million in 2022 to 281 million a year later.

About 20% of all Catholics in the world are Africans - most from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria.

But there are millions of Catholics in a number of smaller African countries, and they will all be mourning Pope Francis today.

Although many African Catholics are on the more conservative side and did not always agree with Pope Francis’s stance on issues like LGBT rights, they did admire the fact he was willing to draw attention to the world's "forgotten conflicts".

Even on his Easter Sunday service he called for peace in Sudan, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

He went to the DRC in 2023 - one of his last international trips - and many African Catholics admired him for not just talking about those conflicts but for being willing to visit those places and draw attention to them.

Heads of state from across the continent and of different faiths have come out today saying his legacy will be remembered for generations to come, and the African Union said his voice provided more clarity at a time when the world is increasingly fractured.

Pope Francis has died after leading the Roman Catholic Church for more than a decade.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born on 17 December 1936 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He became Pope in 2013, in his seventies, succeeding Benedict XVI.

Here are some of the most striking images from his life and papacy:

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Reuters