Catholic Church

The pope is the bishop of Rome and the head of the worldwide Catholic Church. He is also known as the supreme pontiff, Roman pontiff, or sovereign pontiff. From the 8th century until 1870, the pope was the sovereign or head of state of the Papal States, and since 1929 of the much smaller Vatican City State. From a Catholic viewpoint, the primacy of the bishop of Rome is largely derived from his role as the apostolic successor to Saint Peter, to whom primacy was conferred by Jesus, who gave Peter the Keys of Heaven and the powers of "binding and loosing", naming him as the "rock" upon which the Church would be built. The current pope is Leo XIV, who was elected on 8 May 2025 on the second day of the 2025 papal conclave.

While his office is called the papacy, the jurisdiction of the episcopal see is called the Holy See. The word see comes from the Latin for 'seat' or 'chair' (sede, referring in particular to the one on which the newly elected pope sits during the enthronement ceremony). The Holy See is a sovereign entity under international law; it is headquartered in the distinctively independent Vatican City, a city-state which forms a geographical enclave within the conurbation of Rome. It was established by the Lateran Treaty in 1929 between Fascist Italy and the Holy See to ensure its political and spiritual independence. The Holy See is recognized by its adherence at various levels to international organizations and by means of its diplomatic relations and political accords with many independent states.

The sacrament of holy orders in the Catholic Church includes three orders of men: bishops, priests, and deacons, in decreasing order of rank, collectively comprising the clergy. In the phrase "holy orders", the word "holy" means "set apart for a sacred purpose". The word "order" designates an established civil body or corporation with a hierarchy, and ordination means legal incorporation into an order. In context, therefore, a group with a hierarchical structure that is set apart for ministry in the Church.

Men in the last year of seminary training who are seeking ordination as a priest are typically ordained to the "transitional diaconate", while men who are not seeking priestly ordination are instead ordained to the "permanent diaconate". Deacons, whether transitional or permanent, receive faculties to preach, to perform baptisms, and to witness marriages (either assisting the priest at the Mass, or officiating at a wedding not involving a Mass). They may assist at services where Holy Communion is given, such as the Mass, and they are considered the ordinary dispenser of the Precious Blood (the wine) when Communion is given in both types and a deacon is present, but they may not celebrate the Mass themselves. They may officiate at a funeral service not involving a Mass, including a visitation (wake) or the graveside service at burial.After six months or more as a transitional deacon, a man will be ordained to the priesthood. Priests may preach, perform baptisms, witness marriages, hear confessions and give absolutions, anoint the sick, and celebrate the Eucharist or the Mass. Some priests are later chosen to be bishops, who are the ordinary ministers of confirmation and holy orders; bishops may ordain priests, deacons, and other bishops.

The Apostolic Palace is the official residence of the Pope, the head of the Catholic Church, located in Vatican City. It is also known as the Papal Palace, the Palace of the Vatican and the Vatican Palace. The Vatican itself refers to the building as the Palace of Sixtus V, in honor of Pope Sixtus V, who built most of the present form of the palace.

The building contains the papal apartments, various offices of the Catholic Church and the Holy See, private and public chapels, the Vatican Museums, and the Vatican Library, including the Sistine Chapel, Raphael Rooms, and the Borgia Apartments. Tourists can see this part of the palace, but other parts, such as the Sala Regia (Regal Room) and Cappella Paolina, had long been closed to tourists, though the Sala Regia allowed occasional tourism by 2019. The Scala Regia (Regal Staircase) can be viewed from one end and used to enter the Sala Regia. The Cappella Paolina remains closed to tourists.

The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller (/ˈhɒspɪtələr/), is a Catholic military order. It was founded in the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in the 12th century and had its headquarters there, in Jerusalem and Acre, until 1291, thereafter being based in Kolossi Castle in Cyprus (1302–1310), the island of Rhodes (1310–1522), Malta (1530–1798), and Saint Petersburg (1799–1801).

The Hospitallers arose in the early 12th century at the height of the Cluniac movement, a reformist movement within the Benedictine monastic order that sought to strengthen religious devotion and charity for the poor. Earlier in the 11th century, merchants from Amalfi founded a hospital in Jerusalem dedicated to John the Baptist where Benedictine monks cared for sick, poor, or injured Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. Blessed Gerard, a lay brother of the Benedictine order, became its head when it was established. After the Christian conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 during the First Crusade, the Hospitallers rose in prominence and were recognized as a distinct order by Pope Paschal II in 1113.

Dominus is the Latin word for Lord or owner. Dominus was used primarily as an imperial title during the era of the Roman Empire (25 BC – 1453 AD) and was also the Latin title of the feudal, superior and mesne, lords. Dominus was also used as an ecclesiastical and academic title during thattime. The ecclesiastical title was translated from the French seigneur into English as sir, making it a common prefix for parsons before the Reformation. This is evident by the character's name Sir Hugh Evans in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor. The title Dominus is still used in modern times for those with a Bachelor of Arts degree.

The shortened form for Dominus – Dom – has remained in use in modern times as a prefix of honor for ecclesiastics of the Catholic Church, and members of religious orders, especially for those of the monastic Order of Saint Benedict, the Benedictines, who have professed perpetual religious vows. The Spanish equivalents of Doñacode: spa promoted to code: es and the French equivalent of Dame are given to nuns of the Benedictine order.

The Society of Jesus (Latin: Societas Iesu; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits (/ˈdʒɛʒuɪts, ˈdʒɛzju-/ JEZH-oo-its, JEZ-ew-; Latin: Iesuitae), is a religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rome. It was founded in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola and six companions, with the approval of Pope Paul III. The Society of Jesus is the largest religious order in the Catholic Church and has played a significant role in education, charity, humanitarian acts and global policies. The Society of Jesus is engaged in evangelization and apostolic ministry in 112 countries. Jesuits work in education, research, and cultural pursuits. They also conduct retreats, minister in hospitals and parishes, sponsor direct social and humanitarian works, and promote ecumenical dialogue.

The Society of Jesus is consecrated under the patronage of Madonna della Strada, a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and it is led by a superior general. The headquarters of the society, its general curia, is in Rome. The historic curia of Ignatius is now part of the Collegio del Gesù attached to the Church of the Gesù, the Jesuit mother church.

The Baroque (UK: /bəˈrɒk/ bə-ROK, US: /bəˈroʊk/ bə-ROHK, French: [baʁɔk]) is a Western style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from the early 17th century until the 1750s. It followed Renaissance art and Mannerism and preceded the Rococo (in the past often referred to as "late Baroque") and Neoclassical styles. It was encouraged by the Catholic Church as a means to counter the simplicity and austerity of Protestant architecture, art, and music, though Lutheran Baroque art developed in parts of Europe as well.

The Baroque style used contrast, movement, exuberant detail, deep color, grandeur, and surprise to achieve a sense of awe. The style began at the start of the 17th century in Rome, then spread rapidly to the rest of Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, then to Austria, southern Germany, Poland and Russia. By the 1730s, it had evolved into an even more flamboyant style, called rocaille or Rococo, which appeared in France and Central Europe until the mid to late 18th century. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires including the Iberian Peninsula it continued, together with new styles, until the first decade of the 19th century.

Flavia Julia Helena (/ˈhɛlənə/; Ancient Greek: Ἑλένη, Helénē; c. AD 246/248 – 330), also known as Helena of Constantinople and in Christianity as Saint Helena, was a Greek Augusta of the Roman Empire and mother of Emperor Constantine the Great. She was born in the lower classes traditionally in the city of Drepanon, Bithynia, in Asia Minor, which was renamed Helenopolis.

Helena ranks as an important figure in the history of Christianity. In her final years, she made a religious tour of Syria Palaestina and Jerusalem, during which ancient tradition claims that she discovered the True Cross. The Eastern Orthodox Church, Catholic Church, Oriental Orthodox Churches, Anglican Communion, and the Lutheran Church revere her as a saint.

A confessional state is a state which officially recognises and practices a particular religion (also known as a state religion), usually accompanied by a public cult, ranging from having its citizens incentivised to do likewise through government endorsement to having public spending on the maintenance of church property and clergy be unrestricted, but it does not need to be under the legislative control of the clergy as it would be in a theocracy.

Over human history, many states have been confessional states. This is especially true in countries where Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism were the religions of the state. Until the beginning of the 20th century, many if not most nations had state religions enshrined in their respective constitutions or by decree of the monarch, even if other religions were permitted to practice.

In the year before the First Council of Constantinople in 381, Nicene Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire when Theodosius I, emperor of the East, Gratian, emperor of the West, and Gratian's junior co-ruler Valentinian II issued the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, which recognized the catholic orthodoxy, as defined by the Council of Nicea, as the Roman Empire's state religion. Historians refer to this state-sponsored church using a variety of terms: the catholic church, the orthodox church, the imperial church, the Roman church, or the Byzantine church, with some also used for wider communions extending beyond the Roman Empire. The Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, and the Catholic Church all claim to stand in continuity from the Nicene Christian church to which Theodosius granted recognition. Political differences between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Persian Sassanid Empire led to the separation of the Church of the East in 424. A doctrinal split within the imperial church led to the independence of early Oriental Orthodoxy, while the fall of the Western Roman Empire initiated the gradual separation between Eastern and Western Christianity, culminating in the East-West schism of 1054. The Western Church evolved into the Latin Catholic Church while the Eastern Church that remained under the patronage of the Eastern empire and evolved into the Greek Orthodox Church.

Earlier in the 4th century, following the Diocletianic Persecution of 303–313 and the Donatist controversy that arose in consequence, Constantine the Great had convened councils of bishops to define the orthodoxy of the Christian faith and to expand on earlier Christian councils. A series of ecumenical councils convened by successive Roman emperors met during the 4th and the 5th centuries, but Christianity continued to suffer rifts and schisms surrounding the theological and christological doctrines of Arianism, Nestorianism, Miaphysitism, and Dyophysitism. In the 5th century, the Western Roman Empire decayed as a polity; invaders sacked Rome in 410 and in 455, and Odoacer, an Arian barbarian warlord, forced Romulus Augustus, the last nominal Western Emperor, to abdicate in 476. However, apart from the aforementioned schisms, the church as an institution persisted in communion, if not without tension, between the East and West. In the 6th century, the Byzantine armies of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I recovered Italy and other regions of the Western Mediterranean shore. The Byzantine Empire soon lost most of these gains, but it held Rome, as part of the Exarchate of Ravenna, until 751, a period known in church history as the Byzantine Papacy. The early Muslim conquests of the 7th–9th centuries would begin a process of converting most of the then-Christian world in the Levant, Middle East, North Africa, regions of Southern Italy and the Iberian Peninsula to Islam, severely restricting the reach both of the Byzantine Empire and of its church. Christian missionary activity directed from the capital of Constantinople did not lead to a lasting expansion of the formal link between the church and the Byzantine emperor, since areas outside the Byzantine Empire's political and military control set up their own distinct churches, as in the case of Bulgaria in 919.