At 7:35 on Easter Monday, as the bells of St. Peter’s Basilica hung in stunned silence and the air still carried the fragrance of resurrection lilies, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, went home. Not to the Domus Sanctae Marthae where he had humbly lived, but to the Father’s house, whose poor and wounded he had spent his life defending. He died the way he lived, on a day of ultimate hope, after a lifetime of radical grace.
This was no ordinary death. This was divine timing.
Francis, the 266th pope, didn’t just lead the Catholic Church. He disrupted it. He walked barefoot into the gilded halls of tradition and asked the world’s most ancient institution a dangerous question: Who are we if we no longer serve the forgotten? In an age of spectacle, he chose simplicity. In a time of division, he chose unity. And in a Church battling its own demons, he chose to fight not with thunder, but with mercy.
From the slums of Buenos Aires to the throne of St. Peter, Jorge Mario Bergoglio never stopped being a priest of the people. He dined with the homeless, washed the feet of prisoners, embraced the outcast, and dared to declare, Who am I to judge, in a Vatican where judgment had long been law.
But perhaps the greatest miracle of his papacy was not what he said. It was what he dared to be. A pope who refused the palace. A shepherd who refused the scepter. A man in white who walked through the smoke of scandal and corruption and said, Let the Church be a field hospital after battle.
And battle he did.
He took on the fortress. The Curia. The cold stares of cardinals who saw his humility as weakness and his compassion as heresy. He buried a predecessor and inherited a Church torn between progress and preservation. And somehow, he kept the flame lit.
When the wolves came with their knives of tradition, Francis responded with silence and prayer. When they tried to use Benedict’s shadow as a sword, he responded with visits and reverence. He played no games. He waged no war. Yet he changed everything.
He redefined what it means to be a pope. Not an untouchable monarch but a servant broken for the world. He was mocked, misunderstood, even betrayed by his own. But still, he smiled. Still, he loved. Still, he forgave.
So why Easter Monday?
Because resurrection was always his message. He believed the Church could rise again from scandal, from pride, from apathy. He believed humanity could rise again from selfishness, from greed, from hate. He preached a resurrection not just of Christ but of conscience. And so, in one last divine wink, the man who led the Church toward the light of compassion and away from the shadows of fear chose this day to die.
He left no vacuum. He left a blueprint.
And now, the keys of Saint Peter lie in still hands once more but this time, not gripped with power, but opened in surrender.
The world responded not with noise, but with reverent awe. Cathedrals lit candles across continents. Pilgrims wept at the Vatican gates. Heads of state, street vendors, bishops, and beggars spoke his name in the same breath. Not because of the office he held, but because of the heart he revealed.
In his own words, spoken in a homily years ago, Perhaps the Lord is calling us to be a Church that is not afraid of tenderness. A Church that kneels beside suffering, not above it. A Church that smells of the sheep.
Now that voice is silent. And yet it echoes.
The Church stands at another threshold. Francis, like Benedict before him, reminded the world that popes can resign, that thrones can be vacated without scandal, that power can be held with open palms. But more than that, he reminded the faithful that change is not betrayal, that tradition is not stagnation, and that love is the loudest doctrine of all.
Let the world remember. He was not a pope of convenience. He was a storm wrapped in mercy. A rebel dressed in white. And now, he is gone, leaving behind an institution trembling on the edge of yet another impossible choice. Whether to follow him into the future or retreat into the past.
But this much is clear.
The man who died on Easter Monday made sure the Church would never be the same.
Stephanie Shaakaa
University of Agriculture, Makurdi.
