Sede Vacante

Italy hadn’t even cleared the dishes. There was still Colomba on the table. People were leaning back in their chairs, full, lazy, quiet. And then the news came. Pope Francis was dead.

The 266th Pope. The one who sounded like he was actually listening. “Who am I to judge?” he once said, and it landed like water in a desert. For people like me, who’d grown up with guilt stitched into our Sunday best, it was the first time someone in white robes sounded human.

I’m not a practising Catholic. I left all that a long time ago. I made myself vomit the morning of my Confirmation when I was 11 years old because the idea of standing up in front of everyone made me feel like I couldn’t breathe. I said I had a stomach bug. My Dad didn’t ask questions. I never went back. And yet, here I am, in Florence, wearing a gold cross and a small Madonna around my neck. She rests just above my collarbone. Her arms are open. Her face is calm. I don’t wear it because I believe it will save me. I wear it because I bought it for my Dad, who became more Catholic towards the end of his life, and I have worn it since he died. I still want to believe in things that offer comfort without condition.

This morning, I stood on my balcony, drinking coffee after a 5 am interview with the ABC. The bells of Santa Maria del Fiore rang out, not for tourists or for effect. They rang because something had changed, and for a moment, everything felt still. Florence lives in that space between sacred and profane. Angels in the museums, Aperol in the piazzas. You can walk from a statue of the Virgin Mary to a window full of leather jackets in two minutes.

Pope Francis seemed like he never thought the Church was perfect. How could he? He didn’t fix it. He couldn’t. There’s too much rot in the walls. Too many locked doors. But he tried to shift the tone. He talked about love and sexuality more than he did about sin. He focused on refugees, the sick, and the poor. He said what most Popes had never and he made space for nuance. For many of us who had long since given up on the institution, he gave us a reason to look again.

Working in tech, I can't ignore the absurd perfection of that AI-generated Pope photo, the one where he’s wearing a white puffer Prada coat, strutting through the city like a holy style icon. Francis wasn’t polished. He looked tired most of the time. His robes never fit quite right. He limped. He seemed burdened by it all, but still willing to carry it.

The seat is empty. Sede vacante. The cardinals will meet. The Church will, as it always does, keep going. His death, on Easter Monday, in the year of the Jubilee, of all years, feels impossible to ignore. The Jubilee only comes every 25 years. It’s meant to be a year of mercy. A year when debts are forgiven, prisoners are released, and the Church opens its doors to everyone, not just the obedient. It’s a reset. Francis won’t see it. But he lived as though it were already happening.

There’s a beauty here I can’t quite name in the sound of the bells calling out across the rooftops.

I still don’t know if I believe in God.

But I believe in that sound.