The Popequake and who will shepherd the flock now? By Robert Perez

Let’s not tiptoe around it, Pope Francis didn’t just shake the foundations of the Catholic Church; he whacked it with a pastoral sledgehammer, smiled, and offered tea to those left in the rubble. Now, as news of his passing on April 21st, 2025 begins to settle in, so too does the haunting silence of what comes next? For Catholics. For Christians. For everyone who watched, eyebrow raised, as the Church under Francis shifted from a fortress of dogma to a house that ...imagine! let the windows open.

Because make no mistake: Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Jesuit from Buenos Aires, was no mere caretaker Pope. He was a theological hurricane disguised in a white cassock, more shepherd than prince, more barefoot than red-shoed, and more Twitter than Latin Mass. And now, as we prepare for what could either be a cautious reset or a full-blown pendulum swing, the aftershocks of the Popequake are only beginning.

Francis did things Popes don’t do. He spoke about climate change like it was a moral apocalypse. He whispered then shouted, that capitalism needed a conscience. He told priests to stop obsessing over sexuality and start worrying about poverty, exclusion, and loneliness. He turned his back on opulence and pointed out that Jesus did too, thank you very much.

For some, this was heresy in sheep’s clothing. For others, salvation with an Argentine accent.

He opened doors for LGBTQ+ Catholics with the now-famous “Who am I to judge?” a sentence that simultaneously comforted the marginalized and gave canon lawyers a decade-long migraine. He launched a global synod to listen... to listen! to the laity, women, the disenfranchised. In Rome, that’s about as radical as letting dogs vote.

Francis wasn’t perfect. He was frustratingly diplomatic on abuse scandals, and his Vatican appointments often felt like episodes of a slow-moving chess game. But he was human. Honest. A man who cried with war victims and washed the feet of prisoners, who told nuns to make noise and priests to smell like sheep.

Now, with his passing, the question isn’t just “Who will be next?” It’s “Will the Church retreat or advance?” And will the walls that Francis cracked so daringly be patched up or broken through?

The funny thing about Francis was how many non-Catholics watched him. He was like a Pope you could grab a beer with, if he drank beer and if you didn’t mind a spontaneous lecture on the perils of ecological sin. His papacy became a cultural moment, not just a religious one. A Pope who quoted Dostoevsky and dropped climate encyclicals like prophetic mixtapes. An octogenarian moral compass in a world increasingly allergic to ethics.

He became a spiritual lodestar for progressives and a theological thorn for conservatives. In him, some saw a threat to orthodoxy. Others saw a glimpse of Christ.

And that’s the tightrope the next pope will walk. Does he double down on dialogue, inclusion, reform or snap the pendulum back to tradition, hierarchy, and a Church that speaks more Latin than compassion?

Let’s not forget, Popes don’t come with instruction manuals. They’re elected by men who still wear robes and vote in secret, and occasionally, the Holy Spirit delivers a surprise. (See: 2013.)

Francis’ Church was unmistakably global. He elevated voices from the periphery, Africa, Asia, Latin America, reminding the West that it no longer held a monopoly on faith or relevance. He asked questions that made institutions uncomfortable: Why aren’t women voting in synods? Why aren’t divorced people welcomed? Why is the Gospel read but not lived?

He planted seeds. The question now is: will they be watered or uprooted?

This isn’t just Catholic navel-gazing. A billion people call this Church home. Another billion watch it like a litmus test for human decency. And as democracy stumbles, inequality balloons, and the planet gasps, the world needs a moral voice louder than any cathedral bell.

Whether that voice keeps speaking with Francis’ accent or goes mute, is the question trembling under every cassock in Rome right now.

Pope Francis was no towering figure in height, but he cast a shadow long enough to touch every continent. With his passing, that shadow doesn’t vanish. It lingers. Like incense. Or a whisper that something bigger is still moving.

And maybe that’s the point. Maybe he wasn’t the earthquake, but the invitation—to rumble, to move, to rise.

So here we are: after the Popequake. Dust in the air. A billion souls holding their breath. And somewhere, Francis is probably chuckling gently, sipping maté, and reminding us that the Church wasn’t meant to be a museum of saints but a field hospital for the broken.

Let’s just hope the next shepherd remembers where the bandages are.