By Robert Royal.

But first a note: I have long been scheduled to present my new book on the 21st-century martyrs in Rome next week. But the pope's death yesterday means that, in addition to those planned events, I'll be staying over and commenting on the papal funeral and new election both on this site and on television with my colleagues Raymond Arroyo and Fr. Gerald Murray. We covered the conclave (the "Conclave Crew" was the precursor of "The Papal Posse") that elected Francis in 2013 and will do similar duty again in the coming days. Let us all pray for the repose of the soul of Pope Francis and for all God's graces upon the man who will soon become the next successor of St. Peter.

Now for today's column...

Scientists say that, when a strong earthquake occurs, it sometimes causes the rotation of the earth to shift slightly, even minutely changing the shape of the planet and the length of a day. By contrast, it often seems that the Catholic Church and the papacy in these latter days have a weak and not always helpful influence around the globe. But when Pope Francis died yesterday, it was impossible not to notice that, over and beyond all the journalistic chatter, the passing of a pope still shakes up the world. Even the deeply secular, often anti-Catholic news outlets see that.

This papal interregnum is a special time for Catholics to think and act, like Catholics. In the next days, it would be an exceptionally good spiritual discipline, for example, to ignore what most of the secular media have to say in praise or criticism of the pope and to reflect deeply on God's presence in his Church through time and the particular role he has assigned to the successors of Peter. Not all of them were admirable men. Some were not even very Christian. A few were wise. Fewer truly great. But all of them belong to a spiritual order of reality that transcends the usual categories by which we measure world leaders.

Yes, you can, of course, try to apply political criteria to a pope. But it mostly leads to superficiality and foolishness. The notion, for instance, that conservatives opposed Francis while progressives loved him for his critiques of capitalism and advocacy of migrants and the environment - by the way, also major concerns of the "conservative" pope John Paul II (see Centesimus Annus) and Benedict XVI (in particular Ratzinger's beautiful book In the Beginning) - is preposterous. That's the kind of characterization that lazy journalists who see everything through simplistic political lenses use to fill up empty space.

All of that can be better put aside and instead, a Catholic should pray for the repose of the soul of a fellow Christian - a pope, to be sure, and therefore, for a Catholic, a special figure of respect and affection, whatever his flaws and failures. And as for the longer-term effects of his papacy, it's best to leave that to the judgment of time rather than the headlines.

For example, Francis has often been and is again now being touted as a "reformer" - the portfolio he was given early on by the Cardinals who elected him. Francis did scramble the Vatican curial offices, but whether that was a useful reform or "making a mess" only time will tell. The Vatican financial system, too, could have been cleaned up to a large extent by Cardinal Pell, who told me privately just before he died that everything was in place - until he and others were abruptly pulled out without a convincing explanation.

Similarly, the sex scandals led to the publication of a few documents and some weak efforts intended to bring about "reform" of some kind. But even without naming all the names here, though the monster Marko Rupnik must be specified, there was a cloud of friends of Francis accused of grave misdeeds, some even convicted by secular authorities, who were protected and, in some cases, sheltered in Rome. We still await the reckoning needed to root out what can only be called a gay-friendly network that diminishes the spiritual prof...