Who was the oldest pope?
(NEXSTAR) – Pope Francis, whose death was announced Monday, was one of the oldest pontiffs to serve as the head of the Catholic Church.
Francis died at the age of 88 amid ongoing health issues, and following a respiratory crisis that necessitated a prolonged hospital stay earlier this year. But his papacy, which was marked by his humble demeaner and compassion for the sick and less fortunate, was not abnormally short by any stretch: At 12 years, his tenure as pope was right about average for those elected in the 20th and 21st centuries. (During that time, Pope John Paul I had the shortest papacy, at 33 days, while Pope John Paul II had the longest, at over 26 years.)
You wouldn’t have to go back further than the 20th century, however, to find the oldest pope to ever serve. Pope Leo XIII, who ascended to the papacy in 1878, was 93 upon his death in 1903.
Born in Italy in 1810, Leo XIII rose through the ranks of the Catholic Church relatively quickly, becoming an Archbishop before he turned 40 and a member of the College of Cardinals not long after. His papacy was marked by efforts to alleviate the plight of the working class in relation to workers’ rights and wages, earning him the nickname “The Social Pope," per online records.
His reign also lasted just over 25 years and five months, marking one of the longest in the history of the church.
After Leo XIII, the next oldest Catholic leaders to serve as pope of the church were Pope Celestine III, who was believed to be in his early 90s upon his death in 1198, and Pope John XXII, who was believed to be somewhere around 90 when he passed in 1334.
It’s worth noting that Pope Agatho, whose papacy took place in the 7th century, is said to have lived to be 104 years old, but his age has been called into question, and it’s believed that records of his life have been conflated with another religious figure, the Catholic news site Aleteia once reported.
There have also been popes that have reached older ages than Pope Francis — most recently Pope Benedict XVI, who died at 95 in 2022 — but they were not actively leading the church at the time of their deaths.