BBC Vatican Correspondent David Willey Dies at 93

David Willey, the BBC's longtime Vatican correspondent, died aged 93 of heart failure in Italy, The BBC reported. Willey served as a BBC foreign correspondent for more than 50 years. He reported from Algeria, Vietnam and China, and became the network's Rome-based Vatican correspondent, covering the papacies of five popes.

He wrote a book on Pope Francis titled "The promise of Francis: The man, the Pope, and the challenge of change," which he presented to the pontiff in 2016. Willey was awarded an OBE for services to broadcast journalism. Willey started his career as a trainee at the Reuters news agency and covered the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957.

He became the BBC's east Africa correspondent in 1964, reported on the Vietnam War and from China after the communist revolution, and covered the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. The BBC said Willey was still working into his nineties and last year reflected on changes in the Vatican after the death of Pope Francis.

He met his fifth pope, the newly elected Pope Leo, in that period.

"I have suddenly realised with something of shock that I am already not only four years older than the late Pope Francis, but that my own life now extends through no fewer than eight successive papal reigns," Willey wrote in an article last year.