Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo has joined the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in mourn­ing the death of Pope Fran­cis, de­scrib­ing him as “a trans­for­ma­tion­al leader” and ex­press­ing con­do­lences to the Vat­i­can and the glob­al Catholic com­mu­ni­ty.

In a let­ter to Car­di­nal Gio­van­ni Bat­tista Re, dean of the Col­lege of Car­di­nals, Kan­ga­loo wrote: “On be­half of the gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and on my own be­half, I ex­tend deeply felt con­do­lences to all with­in the Vat­i­can and to the wider com­mu­ni­ty of the faith­ful who have been un­der the Holy Fa­ther’s watch­ful care since his elec­tion as Pope on 13 March 2013.”

Fran­cis, the first Latin Amer­i­can pon­tiff, died on Mon­day af­ter more than a decade as leader of the Ro­man Catholic Church. Kan­ga­loo praised his lega­cy of com­pas­sion and com­mit­ment to so­cial jus­tice, not­ing that he “served with deep hu­mil­i­ty and un­wa­ver­ing ded­i­ca­tion to up­lift­ing the mar­gin­alised and ad­dress­ing the most press­ing so­cial chal­lenges of our time”.

Dur­ing his pa­pa­cy, Fran­cis be­came a promi­nent ad­vo­cate for peace, pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion, cli­mate ac­tion, and hu­man rights. Kan­ga­loo said he “brought a unique and em­pa­thet­ic voice to the Vat­i­can, re­shap­ing the glob­al Church’s mis­sion with a fo­cus on mer­cy, in­clu­siv­i­ty and so­cial jus­tice”.

She added that his lead­er­ship had “in­spired mil­lions and opened new paths for di­a­logue among peo­ple of di­verse be­liefs”.

Trinidad and To­ba­go, she said, joins the world in mourn­ing his pass­ing and of­fers prayers “of peace and com­fort to all who held Pope Fran­cis dear”.