When a Pope’s Profile Dies, where will the white smoke blow?

On Monday, April 21, 2025, at 7:35 AM, Pope Francis returned “to the Father’s House.” With his passing, we lose not only a spiritual leader but also a vast digital corpus: posts, images, videos, and reflections that reached millions of faithful around the world via Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and the Vatican’s website.

But what will become of his official Instagram account—and, more broadly, of his digital legacy?

1. An Uncharted Ritual Territory The Church has millennia-old rites for treating the physical remains of Popes—from solemn funerals to entombment in St. Peter’s Basilica. Yet, there is no equivalent legal or conventional framework for a Pope’s digital inheritance. Francis I was the first pontiff to open personal social media profiles, leaving not only his magisterium but a living online memory.
2. What Will the Vatican State Do? Vatican privacy laws are modeled on the EU’s GDPR, but they lack explicit provisions for preserving papal social media. Who will decide which content deserves to remain in the “ether” and which should be archived or deleted? A Vatican commission? An external digital-archiving curator? Or will everything be left to Meta’s settings and the “black smoke” of algorithms?
3. Rights and Duties in the Digital Age Will the faithful and historians have free access to posts for study and research? Or will the digital legacy—shielded by copyright and privacy—risk being locked away in a protected archive? And how can the message of Francis’s humanity and inclusion be safeguarded from “AI twins” or misuse?
4. A Glimpse into the Future: From Leo XIV Onward Will Francis I’s profile be closed—or “frozen”—to make room for Leo XIV’s? Or will a permanent digital archive, akin to the Vatican Museums, be created where believers can consult the “Sistine Chapel” of papal tweets and Instagram stories? Or will it pass through the next Pope, as a sort of “Potus” profile logic?

Legacy Beyond Backups This is not merely about servers or backups; it’s a moral legacy. How do we honor a digital bequest without betraying its spirit of simplicity and service? The Vatican’s decision will open new ritualistic and jurisprudential scenarios, setting a crucial precedent for future pontiffs.

In an era where every word remains online forever, what principles should guide the preservation of the digital profiles of such influential figures?