The Final Ascension of Pope Francis

The truly remarkable thing about the sky at the moment of Pope Francis’ death is that it’s about as close as astrology can get to an image of a soul ascending to the heavens. 

This is the chart, an image of the sky over the Vatican when Pope Francis died. 

The red vertical line that separates the chart in two goes from the bottom of the chart—the IC or Imum Coeli—to the very top of the chart, the Midheaven. The MC or Midheaven is the peak of the sky; it's the highest point on the sun’s path and any planet there is at its greatest elevation, literally as close to the heavens as it could be.

My brain fell out of my head when I pulled up the chart for 7:35am in Vatican City, his moment of death, and saw that every single planet  in the sky is rising up from the IC towards the Midheaven. 

This part of the chart is called the “eastern” part of the sky because the AC (ascendent) is where the sun rises: the eastern horizon . (The symbol for the AC in this chart is a circle with a horizontal slash on the left side.) Everything between the MC and the IC on the left side of the chart is eastern, rising upwards, gaining in energy not losing it. 

Egyptian beliefs that shaped the astrological houses framed the sun’s daily rotation as a continual cycle of life, death, and rebirth: the sun rises and is born at the ascendent, reaches the peak of its glory at the MC, dies on the descendent (the western horizon), journeys through the underworld, and is resurrected at the ascendent again each morning. 

That’s really what’s so amazing to me about this chart; every single planet is rising up from the depths of the underworld and ascending over the horizon of rebirth, reaching upwards towards the celestial sphere, towards the heavens themselves. 

The only planet that is technically over the line, beginning to tip downward, is the moon, but she is at literally the exact degree of the midheaven, the utter peak: the physical body tipping over the invisible edge of the midheaven. The moon isn’t alone there: Pluto is also only a few minutes (not degrees) away, smack on the Midheaven. The moon applying to Pluto could be a descent to the land of the dead—if it weren’t happening at the absolute peak of the sky. Instead it reads so clearly as an ascent to the land of the dead instead. 

The first planet is Mars at the base of the chart, in the sign of Leo (rulers and leaders). We know that Pope Francis died of a heart attack and stroke. For thousands of years Leo’s assigned body part has been the heart and we wouldn’t call it an attack if Mars, the god of war, wasn’t involved. 

Mars is in exact opposition to the moon. Francis was born at night, so he belongs to the lunar sect, and the moon is his sect light. The moon is always tied to the physical body, but as his sect light too, the moon is the source of the life force itself. Of course both a stroke and a heart attack are the results of blockages and constriction and the moon sits in one of Saturn’s signs (and as I said, unimaginably close to Pluto). 

Going from Mars at the bottom, notice how every single planet (both modern and ancient) is between Mars and the moon at the top. All of them are ascending, rising upwards. 

We encounter something wild on the ascendant—Uranus, the planet of disruption, revolutions, sudden shifts and surges of energy—is on the exact same degree as the ascendent, literally sitting on the eastern horizon at the time of his passing. The AC is at 26 degrees—the degree of perhaps the most notorious fixed-star, Algol (from arabic رأس الغول raʾs al-ghūl or “the demon’s head”). It’s the most prominent star in Medusa’s decapitated head in the Persus constellation, and so has come to be associated with actual beheadings, sudden and violent events, and particularly the deaths of rulers or “heads” of state. 

Pope Francis has an even more personal connection to this encounter on the AC at his passing, because this happens to be a few degrees away from where he has the Lot of Fortune in his natal chart (23 degrees Taurus). The Lot of Fortune is deeply tied to the moon, our health, and the physical body. It shows us those things that are fated and beyond our individual control. 

While the chart may point towards death of the body, there is something uncanny about seeing that in the chart for the moment of his passing every planet is in the eastern part of the sky, the place of rebirth and resurrection, growth and new life, and all of this the day after Easter, the day Christ rose from the dead. 

I’m not a Catholic (though I was raised one), and have never particularly liked the idea that heaven is up. But I feel like anyone regardless of faith can let themselves be awed by this incredible synchronicity, that the Pope would die while every planet in the sky rises toward the heavens.  

Loosing the Bond: Zodiacal Releasing & the Death of Pope Francis 

I’ve been focusing mostly on the chart for the moment of the Pope’s death as a standalone chart, with only a couple mentions of Francis’ natal chart. However, I also evaluated his death using various time lord techniques, and what I found using Zodiacal Releasing really grabbed me. 

Very briefly, Zodiacal Releasing is an ancient time lord technique based on the Lots of Fortune and Lot of Spirit that uses fractals to create layered tiers of rulership over each moment in time, with one planet ruling over years, another months, another days (and even a final one for hours). The two most important ones to focus on are the level 1 time lord (years) and the level 2 time lord (months). In ZR, beginning at birth, a particular sign & house are activated on each level of time, and if a planet is in that sign then it becomes the time lord or chronocrator. If there is no planet there, then the domicile ruler of that sign becomes the level 1 lord. (If you want to read more about Zodiacal Releasing, here’s a deeper introductory article.) You can also calculate your own ZR periods on astro-seek.com by choosing "Traditional chart (whole sign)" and scanning dow to ZR.

The moments that we want to look for in ZR, the moments that really matter in life, are when the level 1 lord and the level 2 lord have a shared agenda in the natal chart—they both point towards the same fate, the same narrative complex in the natal chart, and have some connection to each other (bodily, by aspect, or by rulership). 

The other key moments in ZR—the flashing lights to pay attention—are “loosing of the bond” periods. These are rare and happen when one layer of time has gone through the zodiac entirely and arrives back where it started. It then jumps to the opposite side of the chart and rulership is handed over from the current planetary time lord to whatever planet occupies (or rules) that opposite sign. The loosings of the bond are moments of heightened importance, often marked by paradigm shifts and/or culminations. 

Demetra George has tied the Loosing of the Bond to a ritual that was part of the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia, in which bound statues were ritually untied and all social order & hierarchy was temporarily reversed. This has a lot of resonance with the way that eclipses were traditionally understood and interpreted as well: as reversals or disruptions in the natural order of the heavens indicating possible radical shifts in social order or leadership.  (I’m tempted to rant about how these Loosing of the Bond moments in ZR symbolically act out an eclipse because of the overlapping layers of solar and lunar time and the diametrical reversal at the loosing, but that’s for another essay).

Back to Pope Francis. It turns out that, when you release from his Lot of Fortune (the Lot you start from for matters of health, illness, life and death), Pope Francis just had a “Loosing of the Bond” period on April 4th, 2025, only a couple of weeks before his death. 

What’s even more fascinating is that Leo and the sun are activated before the Loosing of the Bond, but then the sun has to hand off to Saturn—because Saturn is the planet in Pisces, the new active sign. 

Vittius Valens (our only significant ancient source on ZR) places huge emphasis on which planet is handing over to the other at the Loosing of the Bond: which deity sets the tone and quality of time for us at that moment, and what happens when it suddenly surrenders that influence to another planet? In Mark Riley’s translation of Valens’ Anthology, this is called the Mutual Transmissions of the Stars: who transmits their energy, their message, their power to whom. 

This is what Valens, writing in the 2nd century CE, had to say about the transmission that Pope Francis just went through: “the sun and moon when transmitting to Saturn are indicative of setbacks and anxieties, and they bring hostility from the great and threats due to old religious matters, losses, trials, confrontations, suspicions, dubious livelihoods and ranks, ruin, as well as bodily disorders and dangers, shipwrecks, sudden collapses, and very many crises.” 

Saturn is also one of the two main lords at the time of a death by illness that Valens delineates as one of his key chart examples. Saturn was the level one lord (the level of years) and when Mars became the level 2 lord the man died: “Mars, the current ruler of the chronocratorship for health, brings death, having received the chronocratorship from Saturn located in Pisces.” 

It’s interesting that Saturn was bodily present in a sign ruled by Jupiter, showing the importance of emphasizing planets in a sign over the signs ruler. 

One more uncanny reflection of Francis’ death in Valen’s chart example: “The Place of Death was in Pisces, with the moon there also and Saturn in superior aspect.” (It’s a superior square.) Pope Francis too has Saturn—the chronocrator of health and illness—in square to the “Place of Death” (he’s referring to the 8th house from the Lot of Fortune). In this case, the 8th from Fortune is Sagittarius, where Francis has his sun. 

Amazingly, Saturn is also squaring Francis’ sun from Pisces to Sagittarius by transit at the time of his death. So what was happening in this complex mathematical timing procedure is directly mirrored by the actual positions of the stars in relation to his natal chart at the moment he passed.  

Image: Transits to Pope Francis' Natal Chart at His Time of Death

A last pattern I want to point out in Pope Francis’ Zodiacal Releasing periods: on level 1 (years) releasing has come to Virgo, on level 2 the bond has just been loosed to Pisces (month), and on level 3 (days) we also have Pisces. All of these signs are cadent in Pope Francis’ natal chart and succedent relative to Fortune. The rulers (Mercury and Jupiter) are angular in the natal chart, but cadent from Fortune (and they straddle the descendent, a place much more tied to death in ancient times than in modern astrology). 

The cadent houses (3, 6, 9, 12) are considered marginal places, the ancient astrologers called them “metakosmios” or “between worlds.” They are the houses with the lowest concentration of the life force, symbolically connected to death, even in their name, cadent, which shares the same root as the word cadaver: cad-, from cadere, to fall. 

The more research I do, the less I think that all of the periods that are angular from Fortune should be considered “peak periods.” The one historical source for actually practicing Zodiacal Releasing is Vittius Valens, who only places a strong emphasis on the 10th house from Fortune when releasing from Spirit, and does not actually pay special attention to the angles or angularity (from Fortune or the natal angles) in his delineations. In fact none of Valens’ chart examples highlight angularity or the angular periods, instead focusing on the core significations of each house relative to the LOF. 

Across the board, we see that the core meaning of the houses define the themes of a given period, and the most important periods are usually when releasing comes bodily to a planet in a sign—particularly if that planet is a malefic or a benefic. It’s also clear that the Loosing of the Bond is a flashing signal of critical life events in emergence—and that we can unlock the code to interpreting those moments by studying the hand-off of chronocratorship at the moment of the loosing. 

I hope you’ve also felt some of the awe that swallowed me while researching these charts and this moment in time, and discovering these uncanny reflections of our little human world across different astrological techniques and approaches. There’s SO much more I’d like to say (the circumambulations are unbelievable too!) but I think I’ll have to save it for another article some day. 

After all of that, I think I’m still most wowed by the first image I saw in my research: the sky above the Vatican when Pope Francis took his last breath, every planet rising upward toward the heavens.  

Disclaimer: I think the position of Pope should be abolished and I will never understand the impulse to identify with an organization—the Catholic church—that has a known history of committing some of the most vile, sadistic acts that have ever been perpetrated against human beings—from colonialism and slavery, to the inquisition, to crusades, to their contemporary colonial missions around the world, coercing desperate people into indoctrination in exchange for food and medicine, not to mention their persistent dehumanization of queer people and the subjugation of women.