On Easter Sunday morning, Pope Francis met with JD Vance. Just hours later, he made his final public appearance, delivering the Urbi et Orbi address to a packed square of pilgrims, focusing on a plea for peace in Gaza. The image of him mustering his strength to offer those last words as he rolled through the crowd in the popemobile lingered in my mind as I fell asleep.

A few hours later, I woke up in France—where I was visiting a friend—to a text from my father: “The Pope is dead.” A flurry of calls followed. My mother sent the same news, but in her haste to deliver dramatic headlines (nothing excites her more), her phone autocorrected “papa” with an accent—so for one heart-stopping moment, her message made it seem like my own father had died.

This is the second time I’ve been away from Rome when a pope passed. The first was in 2005, when John Paul II died. I was living in New York then, and I remember being glued to CNN all day. It was the pre-social media era—I might’ve still been using dial-up. Christiane Amanpour’s deep, authoritative voice narrating every step of the funeral rites held me spellbound. I was awestruck that such a grand, almost mythical event belonged to my city, to my roots.

I remember the eerie hush of the funeral, the wind flipping the pages of the Gospel book on the pope’s coffin before slamming it shut, the cardinals’ zucchetti (their skullcaps) blowing off in the breeze. It was one of the largest papal gatherings ever: over 300,000 people in St. Peter’s Square, millions more watching worldwide. Solemn, powerful—almost cinematic. And it was unfolding in my city while I could only watch from a screen.

Now, it’s happening again. I’m in Paris, with a return flight to Rome scheduled for the exact date and time of Pope Francis’s funeral. I’ll miss it once more. As I watch livestreams of St. Peter’s Square filling up, I’m hit by a strange feeling I can only call “ecclesiastical FOMO.”

“We’ve lost the first pope with a sense of humor—the most Franciscan virtue of all,” my writer friend Barbara Alberti texts. “We’re screwed now.”

Through a contact, I reach Massimo Leonardelli, a Vatican insider whose charity work has long connected him to the Church’s inner circles. “I wonder if it’ll be like John Paul’s time,” he says. Starved for unfiltered updates from Rome, I shamelessly keep him on the phone. “I’ve seen the square transform when a pope dies. This election is charged with political weight. It feels like both a call to mourn and a call to arms.” Either way, I want to be there—even if just through him. Massimo becomes my lifeline, walking me through each development. “Just got the funeral details from the Santa Sede,” he says, then sends me the first WhatsApp images of the pope in his coffin.

“In 2020, grief congregates online. We call each other, spin stories, then hear them echoed back—did this start with me, or are we all saying the same things?” wrote Pakistani author Dur e Aziz Amna in a New York Times piece on long-distance mourning. It rings true now. Though I’m not in Rome, my phone floods with WhatsApp messages and live links from friends and family.

“I couldn’t stay away—went to the Vatican twice today. I loved that pope,” one friend writes. Another says he’s already waited in line for hours without any special access. “I want to feel united with the popolo,” he explains. Soon after, he sends a photo: porta-potties being unloaded at the edge of St. Peter’s Square. This mix of reverence and practicality—so Roman—makes me ache to be there.That mix of reverence and irreverence—the tension between the sacred and the absurd—is the Roman spirit I miss most right now.

Romans have always excelled at profane, irreverent humor. Writers like Pasolini, Moravia, Manganelli, and Flaiano all captured this attitude—the ability to laugh at anything, even death, and to never be shocked, no matter how seismic the change. Pasolini, especially, was fascinated by Rome’s dual nature: its polished, official facade and its hidden underbelly of hunger, desire, and violence. “We survive, in the confusion / of a life reborn beyond reason,” he wrote in his Roman poems.

So I wasn’t surprised when the mood in St. Peter’s Square shifted overnight—from the joy of Easter to the solemnity of the Pope’s death. Banners were replaced with black-draped balconies, and the square became littered with trampled tulips. Soon enough, Rome’s trademark cynicism surfaced: “Morto un papa se ne fa un altro”—”One pope dies, another is made.” It’s a blunt expression of Italy’s fatalistic view of change, loss, and the relentless march of tradition. Since St. Peter in 33 AD, there have been 266 popes—so the saying fits. Time moves on, indifferent to any single life.

In St. Peter’s Square, mourners scramble for tulips and lilies being carted away, grabbing flowers as if clinging to something fleeting. On the radio show La Zanzara, a viral TikToker pushes a conspiracy theory that the Pope has been dead since February. And as the Conclave nears, Italians grumble that betting on the papal election is illegal—though that hasn’t stopped over $4.5 million in wagers on platforms like Polymarket. Online, memes mock the Pope’s successor as a Neapolitan curse, complete with red horns to ward off bad luck—a surreal blend of sacred and profane that Pasolini would have loved.

But amid the gossip and dark humor, ancient rituals persist. Massimo tells me about the camerlengo, the official who calls the Pope’s baptismal name three times upon his death—a centuries-old rite to confirm his passing. (Now, a medical exam is also required.)

Pope Francis had already simplified funeral traditions. He chose to be buried not in the Vatican, but in Santa Maria Maggiore—a church he visited before and after every major trip. According to La Repubblica, this was deliberate, avoiding the grand memorials of past popes. “He left the sacred Vatican walls in death, becoming a migrant toward a grave rooted in prayer.” He’ll be the first pope in over a century buried outside Vatican City.

Francis also insisted on being called the Bishop of Rome, downplaying titles like Vicar of Christ. “He wanted a simple coffin,” Massimo explains. “Not a spectacle, just a Christian’s death—like anyone else’s.”

My mother once said, “The only time Romans remember who they are is when a pope dies.” She meant that in a city too cool to care about much, the drama of a papal death—and the election that follows—suddenly awakens an ancient sense of grandeur we usually ignore.Ignore. After all, Rome was once called caput mundi—the capital of the world—a phrase the poet Lucan used way back in 65 AD. “I mean, what other city can bring in 40 heads of state and 19 prime ministers overnight?” she asks, half-bragging. She remembers watching three papal elections from the rooftop of her apartment in Prati, just steps from the Vatican. “Every time a pope died,” she says, “my mom would take me up to watch the smoke from the Sistine Chapel. It was the most exciting part of my childhood.”

According to Massimo, this won’t be an easy conclave. Rome is already buzzing with speculation. Our local favorite is Matteo Zuppi—or Don Matteo, as everyone in Rome calls him. With many friends from my parents’ generation, he attended Liceo Virgilio in the late ’60s, a central high school known for its progressive politics. He witnessed Roman youth caught up in the protests of 1968 and the rise of terrorist movements, shaping his own political and spiritual conscience. A member of the Sant’Egidio community, he helped broker the end of Mozambique’s civil war in 1992 and is known for his outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics, as well as his work with the homeless and those struggling with addiction.

“He’d be perfect,” my mother says. “He used to say Mass for all our friends who overdosed in the ’70s. If you’re writing about him, you have to call him.” I gently remind her he might be a little busy right now.

Later, Massimo texts one last time: Would I like to come say goodbye to the Pope? He sends me the Vatican’s booklet outlining the ritual for closing the casket—prayers, chants, all in Latin with translations beside them. I open the document and feel a sudden thrill, as if glimpsing centuries of Roman tradition. The final words of the ritual are so vivid they create an almost cinematic image:

“The Master of the Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations places a white silk veil over the face of the deceased. The celebrant sprinkles the body with holy water. The Master then places in the coffin a bag containing coins and medals minted during the pontificate of the deceased…” Finally, the wooden coffin is sealed, its lid marked with a cross and the emblem of the late Pope.

I finally admit to Massimo that I’ll be stuck in Paris for all of this. There’s no way to book an early flight to Rome, and security is overwhelming. All I can do is stand in line at Notre-Dame, where a photo of Pope Francis sits before the altar, surrounded by candles. Keeping one foot in and one foot out—it feels like the most Roman way to say goodbye.