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Ryan Laird on WNYC, Studios, and as the world remembers Pope Francis, there's always the question of who and what comes next.

These questions for the church are very much related to the culture war and political questions in the rest of society.

For example, an op-ed in the New York Post by Daniel McCarthy,

editor of Modern Age, a conservative review, said Francis was meant to be a pope for the age of

globalization. The political consensus on both sides of the Atlantic favored free trade and

high levels of immigration. The question was only how high?

The entire planet would soon be a single community, and all that remained to do is reconcile

the United States and Europe with the global South. That called for reminding wealthy Americans

and Europeans of their duties to the world's poor. It continues with same-sex marriage triumphant. The Catholic

Church seemed to be on the losing side of the West's culture war. Its future dependent on

negotiating the best possible terms of surrender. And then later it sort of concludes, but if

Francis was the Pope for a globalist era, what the Catholic Church needs now is a populist pope, one who understands that if the church renews its ties to the working class within the West, not just in the global south, it will find ready converts.

So some excerpts from that op-ed in the New York Post. Obviously, people on the other side of

the culture wars and with different views on what Jesus would want differ from that. We'll get the

analysis and views now, and we'll open up the phones with Daniel Rober, chair of the Catholic

Studies Department at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut.

One of his recent articles in the Catholic-oriented Common Wheel magazine is about the transition

to an unknown future after Francis. Dr. Robber, thank you for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Thank you for having me. It's great to be on. First, on the legacy of Francis himself, before we talk about

the future, you wrote an article that began with you on Good Friday, showing your kids the movie

version of Godspell with its backdrop of early 1970s, New York City. Why did you start your remembrance

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