Pope Francis shocked the world today. He resigned.

It is only the second time in 600 years that a sitting Pope has resigned. Church leaders are in a panic. They just had a Cardinal conclave to elect a new Pope and now that Pope has given up the Papal throne.

The Church is trying to come up with a plan. Church law said cardinals must wait 15 days for a conclave to elect a new holy father. In his final act, Pope Francis altered church law to move the next conclave out of Rome and… to Brazil, where the Pope hopes the Catholic Church will move.

The Cardinals around the world were stunned to hear the news. But Cardinal Dolan of New York was not surprised. “I didn’t vote for Francis. I knew he was a little wishy-washy,” Dolan reportedly told reporters in Rome.

Insiders said that Pope Francis was overwhelmed with all the pomp and circumstance of being Pope. He wanted to lead a life of humility and reach out to the poor and sick, but throngs of people kept surrounding his new residence and he feared for his life. “He didn’t think he could be the leader he wanted to be in the modern world. He feels he would have been a good Pope in the 1700s, but not today.”

Other insiders say that Pope Francis just didn’t want to deal with all the politics of The Vatican. “Pope Benedict was a real Vatican guy,” said a Vatican insider. “He set up a lot of rules and ran a tight ship. Pope Francis doesn’t like the rules and wants to scale back the Vatican operation significantly. That’s not making Vatican officials happy.”

The are some in Rome that are speculating that there must be something else going on. What is going on in the Vatican? Conspiracy theorists on the Internet have all sorts of possible explanations. What do you think?