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”.