The late Pope Francis, who hailed from Argentina, struggled to overcome ‘a lot of resistance’ as a non-European leader of the Catholic Church, a Swedish cardinal said on Monday.

“As the first Latin American pope, Francis was given the great and demanding task of breaking Europe’s hegemony over the Catholic Church. It was not easy for him,” Cardinal Anders Arborelius said in a statement.

“He faced a lot of resistance. Pope Francis could not -– and did not want to –- fit into our European categories. He was neither liberal/progressive nor conservative/traditionalist,” said Arborelius, who will take part in the conclave to elect the next pope.

Francis died Monday aged 88.

Arborelius, the first Swedish Catholic bishop since the Protestant Reformation more than 500 years ago, is considered to be among the favourites to succeed Francis.

Appointed in 2017 as Sweden’s first cardinal, he is a convert to Catholicism in the overwhelmingly Protestant Scandinavian country, home to one of the world’s most secularised societies.