Papacy

In the early 16th century the popes were finally able to consolidate their political authority in the Papal States and became for the first time effective territorial princes. At about the same time, however, Martin Luther made a rejection of the papacy an integral part of the Reformation. With ever-increasing vehemence, he denounced the pope as the Antichrist, not so much for the supposed worldliness and corruption of the papacy as for its failure to proclaim the doctrine of justification by faith. In 1534 King Henry VIII of England had Parliament declare him head of the Church of England, thus dislodging the pope from that office. Although the various Protestant reformers differed among themselves on many issues, all agreed that the papacy was a pernicious, or at least an inessential, institution.

The Roman Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation was known as the Counter Reformation and began with Pope Paul III (reigned 1534-1549). By taking care to appoint worthy men to the College of Cardinals, he tried to guarantee a morally upright papacy in the future. The Council of Trent (1545-1563) did not deal with the role of the papacy in the church, although it formulated most of the doctrines and practices of the modern Roman Catholic Church.

When at its close the council handed over to the papacy its unfinished business and the implementation of its decrees, it did, however, strengthen the popes’ leadership in the church. The exchange of polemics with the Protestants, moreover, moved the papacy to a more central role in Roman Catholic theology than it had had before, and made it the mark that distinguished the Roman Catholic from all Protestant churches. This development also further aggravated the schism with the Eastern church that had occurred in 1054. Still without a clear formulation of the relationship of the papacy to the episcopacy and to national rulers, however, the Roman Catholic Church was susceptible to divisive controversies on these issues, such as Gallicanism, Febronianism, and Josephism in the 17th and 18th centuries. Each of these movements, which stressed some degree of independence of the papacy for bishops or monarchs, was condemned by papal decree. Finally, under Pope Pius IX (reigned 1846-1878) the First Vatican Council (1870) defined papal primacy of jurisdiction and papal infallibility in doctrine.

The French Revolution (1789-1799) and its long aftermath throughout Europe brought new problems to the papacy, especially the drive in Italy toward national unity (see Italian Unification) that led in the 1860s to the incorporation of the Papal States and the city of Rome into the Italian state. In protest particularly against the loss of Rome, Pius IX withdrew from the city to become a voluntary “prisoner of the Vatican,” a tiny area of about 40 hectares (about 100 acres) around Saint Peter’s Basilica. This “Roman Question” was settled in 1929 by an agreement with the Italian government of Benito Mussolini whereby Vatican City became a sovereign state with the pope as its ruler (see Lateran Treaty).

During the last 100 years the papacy has grown in prestige and importance even outside Roman Catholic circles. Beginning with the encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891) written by Pope Leo XIII (reigned 1878-1903), it has taken some far-sighted stands concerning the moral implications of social and economic questions. The papacy held steadfast in opposition to Marxism, but after World War II (1939-1945) it tried to arrive at some accommodation with the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe. It was most successful in Poland and Yugoslavia, where the church operated with some freedom even before the Communist governments were turned out of office.

The attractive personality of Pope John XXIII (reigned 1958-1963) won for the papacy an immense, worldwide respect. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) that Pope John convoked reemphasized the functions of the episcopacy in the government of the church, without denying the decrees of Vatican I, and at the same time adopted a more conciliatory attitude toward the Protestant and Orthodox churches. The council also tended to favor a more participatory, less authoritarian style of church government. Partly in response to such initiatives, the Protestant and Orthodox churches began to reexamine the role of the papacy in the church and to show more sympathy toward that amazingly resilient institution.

Pope John Paul II (reigned 1978-2005), who was born in Poland, was the first non-Italian pope to be chosen in more than 400 years. He emphasized the worldwide nature of the church by traveling extensively, visiting all the continents except Antarctica. He was succeeded by Pope Benedict XVI (reigned 2005- ), the 265th pope in history and the first German to be selected pope since the 11th century. See also Christianity; Roman Catholic Church.