Warning: This story contains the name and images of a deceased Indigenous person.

Adrian Torrens was spared jail and was serving a community corrections order for breaching an AVO when he allegedly murdered Central Coast teenager Audrey Griffin, it can now be revealed.

The 53-year-old was found unresponsive about 4.50pm yesterday in a cell at western Sydney's Silverwater Correctional Complex.

Corrective Services personnel and paramedics were unable to revive him.

READ MORE: Hundreds gather in sunset vigil for allegedly murdered NSW teenager

The discovery, which wasn't revealed until later in the night, came during a vigil that was held for the 19-year-old, with hundreds gathering in Terrigal to pay tribute to the vibrant young woman.

Griffin's mother, Kathleen, received a call from police informing her of the news of Torrens' death as she was leaving the vigil.

The news was described as "bittersweet" by her loved ones.

9News can now reveal that Torrens was serving an 18-month community corrections order at the time of Griffin's murder.

Torrens avoided prison when he was sentenced last October for using a carriage service to harass, menace or offend, and for breaching an AVO.

Torrens had a long history of violent offending and breaching restraining orders.

It can also be revealed that Torrens made a confession to someone close to him about Griffin's murder on the phone in the weeks after her death.

"I just f—— clicked and I have no reason for my actions," he said on the call.

"I just did it, man. I was so f—– up, you know?"

In a following call, he apparently admitted to killing someone.

"I killed someone about a month ago, and now they're looking for me," he said.

Earlier this week, Torrens was charged with 11 separate domestic violence offences relating to another victim.

NSW Premier Chris Minns said he was aware of those reports, which he described as "concerning".

"As soon as we have answers, we'll report them to the family," Minns said.

Griffin's death was initially labelled a drowning by police after her partially submerged body was discovered in Erina Creek on the NSW Central Coast on the afternoon of March 24.

After initially not finding any suspicious circumstances surrounding her death, a homicide investigation was launched following a tip-off from the public.

Police sent out an appeal for information last week along with a photo allegedly showing Torrens near Hotel Gosford, around the time Griffin left her friends and began walking towards Terrigal, about 2am.

Authorities were working off the theory that Torrens followed Griffin, whom he didn't know, from the pub before assaulting her and the teen drowned as a result.

Police said Torrens' DNA was found under Griffin's fingernails and that a witness heard a high-pitched scream in the area around 3am.

He was later arrested and charged with Griffin's murder.

The turn of events left her family, friends and community shocked.

Torrens was put through a mental health assessment when he was remanded in custody.

His death is being treated as a suicide.

A coroner will now determine how his death could have happened within Silverwater jail.

Readers seeking support can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or beyond blue on 1300 22 4636.

National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).

DOWNLOAD THE 9NEWS APP: Stay across all the latest in breaking news, sport, politics and the weather via our news app and get notifications sent straight to your smartphone. Available on the Apple App Store and Google Play.

People from across Australia and around the world have gathered to remember those who gave their lives during Anzac Day services.

Five days before his 100th day in office – and 93 days since his own deadline passed for resolving the conflict in Ukraine – President Donald Trump is frustrated his efforts to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine have so far fallen short, and has privately told advisers that mediating a deal has been more difficult than he anticipated, sources familiar with the discussions told CNN.

Behind the scenes, he frequently brings up how much Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hate one another, one of the sources said – an unsurprising fact, but one the president argues further complicates negotiations.

Overnight, his agitation boiled over as Russia launched its worst assault on Kyiv since last summer, killing at least 12 people.

READ MORE: 'She knew something was wrong': Mum's warning as survival rates for certain cancers stagnate

The attack, Trump said, came at an inopportune moment: just as he believed he was on the verge of securing a deal, which he told aides he wanted in place by his 100th-day anniversary.

"I didn't like last night," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, where he was meeting with Norway's prime minister. "I wasn't happy with it, and we're in the midst of talking peace, and missiles were fired, and I was not happy with it."

It was a rare moment of criticism directed toward Russia from a president whose ire over the course of his time back in office has mostly been aimed at the Ukrainians.

The exchange shined a light on a rising sense of exasperation among the president and his advisers at his inability to mount a successful pressure campaign against Putin to end the war. Trump bristled at a reporter's suggestion that he had not applied pressure to the Russian leader.

"You don't know what pressure I'm putting on Russia," Trump snapped. "We're putting a lot of pressure on Russia, and Russia knows that."

Trump then argued that "it takes two to tango, and you have to have Ukraine want to make a deal, too."

Moscow, he said, has already made a substantial concession by not "taking the whole country."

"Stopping the war," he said, is a "pretty big concession."

Earlier in the day, he addressed Russia's president directly on Truth Social, writing: "Vladimir, STOP!" – an unusually personal plea to convince Putin to cease the aerial bombardment.

"Not necessary," Trump lamented, "and very bad timing."

Still, the rare flash of anger towards Putin paled in scale and scope to Trump's sustained criticism of Ukraine's Zelenskyy, whom he accused this week of prolonging the war in his own country by not agreeing to a US peace plan that would grant Russia most of the territory it has seized. Some US allies are highly alarmed by that framework, CNN reported earlier Thursday, citing multiple diplomatic sources.

Trump's social media message to Putin totaled 30 words; his dispatch a day earlier directed towards Zelenskyy was 259.

READ MORE: 'Outrage': Booing at Anzac Day dawn service condemned by national leaders

Trump signals his timeline

While Trump said again on Thursday that he had "no allegiance" to leaders on either side of the conflict, that question is very much at the centre of the path forward for the administration as it enters the next 100 days. But for one of the first times, he signalled a timeframe for his patience.

Asked what he would do if Putin kept firing bombs on Ukraine, Trump said: "I'd rather answer that question in a week. I want to see if we can have a deal. No reason to answer it now, but I won't be happy, let me put it that way."

Inside the Oval Office, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store had brought along his finance minister Jens Stoltenberg, who served as the secretary general of NATO during Trump's first term in office.

Stoltenberg found success in that period convincing Trump of the importance of the defence alliance and avoided a US withdrawal from the bloc, earning him a reputation as a "Trump whisperer" when it came to matters of European defense.

Trump on Thursday seemed to remember him fondly, calling him "tremendous".

An hour after the Norwegians pulled out of the White House driveway, however, officials did one better: the sitting NATO chief Mark Rutte arrived for his own meeting with Trump, talks not originally on the president's schedule.

The session focused mostly on planning for NATO's summer summit in the Hague, which some European officials have feared Trump might skip as his enmity for the defense alliance festers.

But Rutte also told reporters in the White House driveway Ukraine was discussed. After Trump insisted earlier in the day that Putin still wanted to reach peace, Rutte sounded decidedly less certain.

"I worked with him for four years between 2010 and 2014," Rutte said, describing the period he served as prime minister of the Netherlands. "I stopped trying to read his mind."

Rutte went on to argue that the US' European allies are united in their view of Russia being a "long-term threat."

"We all agree, in NATO, that Russia is the long-term threat to NATO territory, to the whole of the Euro-Atlantic territory," Rutte told reporters.

The NATO secretary said that "something is on the table for Russia" in terms of a peace deal with Ukraine, but he argued that it's up to Russia to bend.

"Ukrainians are really playing ball, and I think the ball is clearly in the Russian court now."

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence Richard Marles has described the moment he walked in the footsteps of his grandfather, Percy Pearce, who fought in the Battle of Pozières in 1916.

Marles told Today about a trip he took to Pozières in 2022, when a local historian took him to the site where his grandfather won his Military Cross for exemplary gallantry.

"At first I thought it was a joke… but as he started talking through the battle I thought, 'Oh my god, this is really it'," Marles said.

READ MORE: Man accused of murdering NSW teen Audrey Griffin found dead in jail cell

"By the time he finished speaking, I was in tears, the chief of the defence force was in tears…

"He was a young man who was faced with just the most terrifying moment: a retreat, as the Germans had basically pierced the line.

"There would have been mayhem as Australians were running past him and he managed to form them up and to hold his spot and in that moment, you know, in a war where literally feet and metres were counted in lives lost, he was able to maintain that line.

"It's an enormous moment of pride for me but to be there and to see it was incredible."

The Battle of Pozières, part of the Somme offensive of the First World War, was a costly and brutal campaign that saw 23,000 Australian casualties, 6800 of whom died, in just weeks of conflict.

Marles said his grandfather seldom spoke about his time at war.

"This is a man I knew, I can remember sitting with grandpa watching the cricket so I have memories with this person.

"This is not a distant figure whose name is only in history, it's a person who I share memories with in my own life.

"I never saw him in the context of someone who fought in war. He didn't like talking about it."

Marles attended this morning's Anzac Day dawn service at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, where agitators booed during the Welcome to Country acknowledgement by Indigenous elder Uncle Mark Brown.

He said he understood the outrage felt across the country but did not want to give airtime to the "appalling" act.

"I was here this morning and witnessed it and I absolutely feel that sense of outrage and I know that people in the crowd did today as well.

"It is a small number of people, and you know what, we should not be giving them airtime.

"Today was a beautiful service."

DOWNLOAD THE 9NEWS APP: Stay across all the latest in breaking news, sport, politics and the weather via our news app and get notifications sent straight to your smartphone. Available on the Apple App Store and Google Play.

The mother of a NSW woman who died of cervical cancer has told how her daughter spent more than a year trying to get doctors to listen to her concerns.

Amanda Ne'Roi is speaking out about her daughter Jaime's devastating case as three peak research organisations – the Australian New Zealand Gynaecological Oncology Group, Ovarian Cancer Australia and the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation – join forces to call on the government to commit $100 million in funding towards gynaecological cancer.

Around 19 Australian women a day are diagnosed with a gynaecological cancer, according to December 2024 statistics from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).

However, survival rates for gynaecological cancers have stagnated and fallen well behind improvements for other cancers, such as breast cancer.

In the 15 years between 1991–1995 and 2016–2020, the five-year survival rate for women with gynaecological cancers increased by just 6 per cent, compared with 13 per cent for breast cancer, the AIHW data shows.

Ne'Roi said Jaime knew something was not right a few months after she gave birth to her second child, Indiana, in May 2020.

"She was having spotting, discharge, and an upset stomach. She felt sick. She just knew something was wrong," Ne'Roi said.

Jaime went to her GP, who referred her to a gynaecologist she had seen a decade earlier, when abnormal cells were detected on her cervix.

At the time, the gynaecologist decided against a hysterectomy because she was yet to have children.

Ne'Roi said the gynecologist dismissed her daughter's symptoms because she had recently given birth.

"He said it was just because she had a baby. He didn't even give her a pap smear test," Ne'Roi said.

Jaime then went to another gynaecologist, who also attributed the symptoms to her having had a baby and put her on the contraceptive pill, Ne'Roi said.

"She kept saying to them, there's something very wrong."

Ne'Roi said she remembered having conversations with Jaime, who was very worried, and telling her to go back to the gynaecologist.

After another visit, the gynaecologist agreed to do an internal examination via a laparoscopy in August 2021, which revealed Jaime had stage 3 cervical cancer at the age of 37.

"By the time she actually got a doctor to listen, she had a seven-centimetre tumour and it was inoperable," Ne'Roi said.

Jaime underwent radiation and chemotherapy, and briefly received good news in December 2021, when a scan showed up clear.

However, by February 2022 the cancer was back and had spread to her uterus and lymph nodes.

A hysterectomy and more chemotherapy and radiation followed, but Jaime's health was deteriorating fast.

The last option presented by Jaime's doctors was immunotherapy, however, the family was told it would need to foot the bill at a cost of $6000 a fortnight.

"My husband and I were looking at selling up our property, everything – so were her brothers," Ne'Roi said.

With the money needed immediately, however, the family started an online fundraiser, which allowed Jaime to start the treatment.

The treatment was not unsuccessful and Jaime died in July 2023, just under two years after she was first diagnosed.

She left behind her partner and two children, Harrison, then aged six, and Indiana, aged one.

"The hardest thing I've had to do in my whole entire life was to tell my grandson his mum had gone," Ne'Roi said.

"He burst into tears and said, 'I just want my mommy back.'"

Rates of cervical cancer have been increasing in Australia, despite the national rollout of the HPV vaccine in 2007, which provides some protection against the cancer-causing virus.

Between 2000 and 2024, incidence rates of cervical cancer have climbed from 5.5 cases per 100,000 people to 8, AIHW data shows.

Ne'Roi said Jaime had been vaccinated for HPV, which showed why women should not become complacent about the disease.  

"I think the trouble is, people become very complacent about gynecological cancers, they aren't mentioned much. Breast cancer is huge," Ne'Roi said.

"I'm sharing this story to illustrate the hidden crisis impacting all Australian women, because it can hit any one of us at any time."

More money was desperately needed for research for all gynecological cancers, Ne'Roi said.

Professor Clare Scott, Australia New Zealand Gynaecological Oncology Group (ANZGOG) chair, said gynecological cancers had been left underfunded for decades and were a hidden crisis that was expected to grow.

Gynecological cancers – which include uterine, ovarian and cervical cancers – are predicted to surge by 21 per cent over the next 10 years.

"For too long, gynaecological cancers have been overlooked and underfunded, leaving women with limited treatment options and unacceptable survival rates," Scott said.

"These are not just statistics – they are our mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, and friends… we must do better."

ANZGOG, along with Ovarian Cancer Australia and the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation, are seeking $100 million in federal government funding over four years to go towards more personalised treatments for patients, clinical education, a national research databank and drug trials.

"The survival rates for gynaecological cancers have barely changed in decades. That fact alone should be a wake-up call," Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation CEO Robin Penty said.

"We know that the answers are there – they lie in research and in better understanding of women's bodies and women's pain. To reveal them we need appropriate and proportionate investment."

A spokesperson for Health Minister Mark Butler said he would continue discussions with the ANZGOG about their proposal.

"The Albanese Labor government is doing all we can to support patients, families, loved ones and carers on the cancer journey," the spokesperson said.

"That's why we fund a range of programs to ensure Australians diagnosed with gynaecological cancer have better outcomes no matter where they live."

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has narrowly been crowned the winner of a third federal election leaders' debate marked by multiple heated clashes.

Regular accusations of lying were scattered among arguments on cost of living, energy policy, housing and how to deal with US President Donald Trump on Nine's The Great Debate tonight.

After the dust settled, the three-person expert panel handed Dutton a tight 2-1 win over Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

AS IT HAPPENED: Albanese and Dutton clash in third leaders' debate

Nine political editor Charles Croucher and Nine radio's Deborah Knight handed narrow wins to Dutton while Australian Financial Review political editor Phil Coorey had Albanese as the slight winner.

"Very close, but I think by far Peter Dutton's best debate… in my eyes, he won by a nose," Croucher said.

Accusations of lying

Things got heated early on in the debate when the topic of Medicare came up.

Albanese said the Coalition had "ripped" $80 billion from health and education in the 2014 budget.

Dutton interjected: Prime Minister, you couldn't lie straight in bed. Honestly, this is unbelievable –

Albanese replied: "You can go to abuse –"

Dutton: "It's just the reality –"

Albanese: "You can go to personal abuse, that's a sign of desperation, Peter, frankly –"

Dutton: "As is lying –"

Albanese: "It's a sign of desperation. Go to the 2014 budget papers. People can do that online. It's all available for all to see."

READ MORE: The 10 closest seats heading into the 2025 federal election

An AAP FactCheck published in March found that while Dutton "planned in 2014 to cut hospital spending by $50 billion over the coming decade, his forecast spending reductions did not happen". The rest of the claimed figure comes from $30 billion in projected savings to education.

It was far from the only time Dutton accused Albanese of lying, which has been a key part of the Coalition's messaging throughout the campaign.

Other key clashes came on nuclear energy, balancing the budget and how to deal with strongman foreign leaders.

Both leaders have made big spending promises on the campaign trail, principally Labor's income tax reduction and the Coalition's temporary cut to fuel excise.

Asked about where he would make savings, Dutton didn't identify any specific cuts but promised to work with central agencies to "identify where there are problems in the budget".

READ MORE: Liberal campaign truck crashes into early voting centre

Albanese argued Dutton should identify the specific areas where his government will make savings.

"There will be cuts afterwards. He's just confirmed that, but they won't tell you what they are now. That's just not being fair dinkum," he said.

Moderator, A Current Affair host Ally Langdon, wasn't impressed.

"I'm not sure that anyone at home is feeling that either of you are being fiscally responsible at the moment, and we're really concerned about the level of debt we're going to be leaving our grandkids," she said.

READ MORE: The election promises Labor and the Coalition have made to win your vote

Nuclear energy

On energy, Dutton said he was committed to nuclear power because it's good for the country, "not because it's politically popular".

"We're paying three times the cost of electricity in this country compared to other parts of the world that have nuclear underpinning renewables," he said.

"We can't pretend that, as the prime minister and (Climate Change and Energy Minister) Chris Bowen keep talking about, that wind is free and solar is free.

"If that were the case, why have your power bills gone up by $1300 instead of down by $275."

Albanese pointed out a string of problems with rolling out nuclear energy in Australia, principally a national moratorium and opposition from several states.

"This is a friendless policy because it doesn't stack up. That's why the business community signed up to our plan for 43 per cent reduction by 2030. Renewables, but backed by gas, backed by hydro and backed by batteries," he said.

"And that is what the Australian Energy Market Operator, what all the private sector investors want to do."

The Trump question

As always, the question of how to deal with US President Donald Trump and other powerful foreign leaders loomed large.

In the last debate, Dutton admitted he'd never met Trump, which was seen by many as a bit of a stumble. He took a different approach this time, stressing that he dealt with the Obama and Trump administrations as a senior minister and attacked Albanese's efforts to negotiate, saying he "can't even get a phone call".

Albanese said the idea Dutton could negotiate an exemption for the latest round of tariffs, which at this point apply to almost every country in the world including many US allies, was "complete nonsense".

Social media bipartisanship

In the post-debate analysis, Croucher suggested it was the "feistiest" but "also the friendliest" of the match-ups so far.

There was even a brief moment of bipartisanship when both men agreed big tech companies should pay for Australian news and young kids shouldn't be on social media.

Dutton said the major parties were on a "unity ticket" over the news bargaining incentives and Albanese said the social media ban for under-16s was "world leading".

They also rose to the task with aplomb when asked to list not one but three things they admired about their rival, with both men listing family as among the other's greatest achievements.

DOWNLOAD THE 9NEWS APP: Stay across all the latest in breaking news, sport, politics and the weather via our news app and get notifications sent straight to your smartphone. Available on the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese went head to head in an at-times fiery third leaders' debate.

Police have revealed they don't believe the man accused of killing a NSW teen "with the kindest soul" knew the 19-year-old before her death.

The body of Audrey Griffin was discovered partially submerged in Erina Creek on the NSW Central Coast on the afternoon of March 24.

Police allege she was killed by 53-year-old Adrian Noel Torrens following a physical altercation after 3am on March 23.

READ MORE: The rites and rituals following the death of a pope, his funeral and burial, explained

"This is a matter that has not sat well with us from the very start," Brisbane Water Police District Commander, Superintendent Darryl Jobson, told media this afternoon.

"For a 19-year old woman to meet her death in a creek was very unsettling for us, because we want the answers.

"These are the types of cases where police want answers, because families want answers."

He said last Thursday night, a media release about police seeking two women and a man over what was then a coronial investigation, led to more information coming to light.

"We know they are potential witnesses to us and are not connected to the man in any way," Jobson said.

"We will be alleging that there's information that other people have brought forward in relation to this incident."

READ MORE: Police try to identify man in decade-old armed robbery CCTV

Then on Friday, "significant information" saw the case become a murder probe.

Jobson said it was a "very challenging" time for the family who are "devastated".

Torrens spent the night in custody on remand and did not ask to be released when his matter was briefly mentioned in Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court today.

The 53-year-old, from Milson's Point in Sydney, will remain behind bars until his matter returns to Gosford Local Court on June 20.

READ MORE: From Buenos Aires to Rome: Key dates in the life of Pope Francis

His lawyer Bashir El Kheir told reports that the investigation is still in the very early stages and he was still trying to determine the allegations against his client.

A fundraising page set up to help Griffin's family with funeral costs said the community was heartbroken by the loss of the beautiful teen, who was "the light in many lives".

"There is no doubt she bought (sic) endless laughter and joy to everyone," the fundraiser said.

"She was the kindest soul to walk this earth and will always be in our hearts."

The 19-year-old was remembered as a valuable member of the premiership Terrigal Wamberal Sharks rugby league team with a "larger-than-life personality" and a "happy go lucky nature".

She also played for the Gosford water polo club, which held a minute of silence for the woman who "always brought a smile to those around her".

According to the Australian Femicide Watch, 22 women have been killed by violence so far in 2025.

DOWNLOAD THE 9NEWS APP: Stay across all the latest in breaking news, sport, politics and the weather via our news app and get notifications sent straight to your smartphone. Available on the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Two daredevils have filmed themselves on board hydrofoils getting dangerously close to a sand pumping dredge at Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast, sparking concern from authorities.

The incident, captured on video, shows the pair riding towards the dredge, with one heard saying, "I'm going victory or death," and later, "Mario don't do it," before successfully passing through the water plume.

Following the stunt, one of the individuals exclaimed, "an incredible shower, it was amazing I went through and just burst out laughing".

READ MORE: Neighbours 'shame' TV star after Nazi salute charge, court hears

Authorities have expressed their concern over the risky behaviour.

"It's when it becomes dangerous that it becomes a problem for us," police superintendent Peter Miles said.

"The people on the boat would not see them, if the boat's moving, or if they come off, they get splattered with sand, they're in the water for a long time."

Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate has previously cautioned against the behaviour, particularly in light of ongoing beach restoration efforts.

"We've got 60 kilometres of beach," the Mayor said, emphasising the ease of maintaining a safe distance from the dredging equipment.

"If you get too close we have to turn it off and it takes a while to start it again.

"There is still 70 per cent of work to be done, in restoring our beaches, with behaviour like this only slowing the progress."

This article was produced with the assistance of 9ExPress.

The faithful in Pope Francis’ hometown lit candles in the church where he found God as a teenager, packed the cathedral where he spoke as archbishop and prayed Monday in the neighbourhoods where he earned fame as the “slum bishop."

For millions of Argentines, Francis — who died on Easter Monday at 88 — was a source of controversy and a spiritual north star whose remarkable life traced their country's turbulent history.

Conservative detractors of the first Latin American pope criticised his support for social justice as an affinity for leftist leaders.

READ MORE: Vatican reveals Pope's cause of death

They pointed to his warm meetings with former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a divisive left-leaning populist figure whose unbridled state spending many Argentines blame for the nation’s economic decline.

They compared their enthusiastic encounters to an unusually stern-faced Francis meeting centre-right former President Mauricio Macri for a curt 22 minutes in 2016.

“Like every Argentine, I think he was a rebel,” said 23-year-old Catalina Favaro, who had come to pay her respects at the downtown cathedral.

“He may have been contradictory, but that was nice, too.”

Kirchner paid tribute to her bond with Francis, saying he was “the face of a more humane church” and recalling their shared love of a prominent Argentine novelist who lionised the country’s populist left-leaning Peronist movement and its efforts to upend class structure in the 1940s and 50s.

Macri called Francis “a stern politician” but overall “a good pastor” whose name deserves “admiration and respect.”

Dedication to the needy

At his regular 8.30am Mass, Buenos Aires Archbishop Jorge Ignacio García Cuerva recalled Francis’ dedication to the less fortunate.

“The pope of the poor, of the marginalised, of those excluded, has passed away,” García Cuerva announced.

Alluding to Francis’ contested legacy, he added: “He was the Pope the Argentines, whom we didn’t always understand, but whom we loved.”

Vatican observers have long described Francis’ decision never to visit his homeland after becoming pontiff as an aversion to his country’s polarising politics.

Tensions reached a head under current libertarian President Milei, who insulted Francis as a “filthy leftist” and “the representative of the evil one on earth” before he took office in December 2023.

They appeared to reconcile during a meeting in Rome last year.

But when Argentine police lashed out at retirees protesting for better pensions in Buenos Aires, Francis broke his customary silence to chide Milei on the impact of his government’s austerity program: “Instead of paying for social justice, they paid for pepper spray,” he said.

Milei couched his condolences with a nod to those tensions.

“Despite differences that seem minor today, having been able to know him in his kindness and wisdom was a true honour for me,” he wrote on social media.

But in a sign of increasing political tensions, a large open-air Mass spilling outside Francis’ childhood church turned volatile late Monday when Milei’s vice president, Victoria Villarruel, made her way through the crowd to her car.

The crowd, recognising Villarruel — a conservative activist with links to Argentina’s notorious military dictatorship — stopped chanting hymns and started shouting insults.

Some shoved and pushed Villarruel but she didn't appear to be hurt and left in her car.

"Get her away from here,” the crowd shouted. “We’ll hunt you down!”

Never travelled home as pope

Francis travelled the world — and even to neighbouring Bolivia, Chile and Paraguay — but never set foot in his homeland after his election in March 2013, much to the chagrin of his compatriots.

“That’s a political decision, there’s no doubt,” Alejandra Renaldo, 64, said from Francis’ first church in the scruffy, middle-class neighbourhood of Flores, less than half a mile from his first home.

“Can you believe he never went to his own land? I much prefer John Paul II, he went to Poland, his country, right after becoming pope. He didn’t have any political ideas.”

At the cathedral where Francis, then Jorge Mario Bergoglio, became archbishop in 1998, worshippers bowed their heads in silent prayer. Some wept, ashen.

They left flowers and handwritten notes on the steps and affixed stickers for Francis’ favourite local soccer team, San Lorenzo, on the stone columns.

In Flores, where Bergoglio was born to an Italian immigrant father and a mother of Italian descent, Argentines stopped to gather around the confessional in the church where, at 16, Bergoglio had said he first heard the call to the priesthood.

“He was a father to us in Flores,” said Gabriela Lucero, 66, as she rose for morning Mass in the Basilica of San Jose de Flores.

“His primary philosophy was that those church doors remain open to everyone, immigrants, the poor, the struggling, everyone.”

Grief in poor Argentine neighbourhoods

With Milei declaring a week of mourning and lowering flags to half-staff, there was a strong sense of grief across the country.

But nowhere was it more apparent than in the hardscrabble neighbourhoods where Francis focused his outreach as archbishop.

His legacy can still be seen in the cadre of priests who have continued working, living and helping the poor in these districts long neglected by successive governments, where garbage spills onto sidewalks and the stench of sewage wafts over rutted dirt streets.

Residents of Villa 21-24, a neighbourhood in southern Buenos Aires, grew emotional as they remembered Francis visiting regularly to share yerba maté, Argentina’s traditional herbal drink, with pious mothers and recovering cocaine addicts alike.

They said he led religious processions barefoot in the streets and helped grow their ramshackle church into a place of prayer and spiritual contemplation, a vibrant community centre with a garden and a school.

‘Most humble person in Buenos Aires’

“He was the most humble person in all of Buenos Aires. We’ll never see a pope like him again," said Sara Benitez Fernandez, 57, a devout member of the congregation in the district. She choked on her tears as she recalled how he always took the subway and walked, never arriving in a car.

"I have no words, it hurts so much, so much,” she said.

The leader of the church, the Rev. Lorenzo de Vedia, a charismatic, dishevelled priest known to most simply as Padre Toto, said the death of his close friend and mentor on Monday left him with a swell of sorrow and whirlwind of other feelings.

“It's a day of pain, but we're not losing the spirit,” he said, as squealing children chased each other outside the rectory.

“We carry on and we fulfill his legacy. We're going ahead with the mission that he entrusted to us.”