Catholic Church

A cardinal is a senior member of the clergy of the Catholic Church. As titular members of the clergy of the Diocese of Rome, they serve as advisors to the pope, who is the bishop of Rome and the visible head of the worldwide Catholic Church. Cardinals are chosen and formally created by the pope, and typically hold the title for life. Collectively, they constitute the College of Cardinals. The most solemn responsibility of the cardinals is to elect a new pope in a conclave, almost always from among themselves, with a few historical exceptions, when the Holy See is vacant.

During the period between a pope's death or resignation and the election of his successor, the day-to-day governance of the Holy See is in the hands of the College of Cardinals. The right to participate in a conclave is limited to cardinals who have not reached the age of 80 years by the day the vacancy occurs. With the pope, cardinals collectively participate in papal consistories, in which matters of importance to the Church are considered and new cardinals may be created. Cardinals of working age are also often appointed to roles overseeing dicasteries (departments) of the Roman Curia, the central administration of the Catholic Church.

A papal name or pontifical name is the regnal name taken by a pope. Both the head of the Catholic Church, usually known as the pope, and the pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria (Coptic pope) choose papal names. As of 2025, Leo XIV is the Catholic pope, and Tawadros II or Theodoros II is the Coptic pope. This article discusses and lists the names of Catholic popes; another article has a list of Coptic Orthodox popes of Alexandria.

While popes in the early centuries retained their birth names after their accession to the papacy, later popes began to adopt a new name upon their accession. This began in the sixth century and became customary in the tenth century. Since 1555, every pope has taken a papal name.

The Vatican Museums (Italian: Musei Vaticani; Latin: Musea Vaticana) are the public museums of the Vatican City. They display works from the immense collection amassed by the Catholic Church and the papacy throughout the centuries, including several of the best-known Roman sculptures and most important masterpieces of Renaissance art in the world. The museums contain roughly 70,000 works, of which 20,000 are on display, and currently employ 640 people who work in 40 different administrative, scholarly, and restoration departments.

Pope Julius II founded the museums in the early 16th century. The Sistine Chapel, with its ceiling and altar wall decorated by Michelangelo, and the Stanze di Raffaello (decorated by Raphael) are on the visitor route through the Vatican Museums, considered among the most canonical and distinctive works of Western and European art.

Catholicisation (American English: Catholicization) refers mainly to the conversion of adherents of other religions into Catholicism, and the system of expanding Catholic influence in politics. Catholicisation was a policy of the Holy See through the Papal States, Holy Roman Empire, Habsburg monarchy, etc. Sometimes this process is referred to as re-Catholicization although in many cases Catholicized people had never been Catholics before.

The term is also used for the communion of Eastern Christian churches into the Catholic Church; the Eastern Catholic Churches that follow the Byzantine, Alexandrian, Armenian, East Syrian, and West Syrian Rites, as opposed to the Latin Church.

Anselm of Canterbury OSB (/ˈænsɛlm/; 1033/4–1109), also known as Anselm of Aosta (French: Anselme d'Aoste, Italian: Anselmo d'Aosta) after his birthplace and Anselm of Bec (French: Anselme du Bec) after his monastery, was an Italian Benedictine monk, abbot, philosopher, and theologian of the Catholic Church, who served as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109.

As Archbishop of Canterbury, he defended the church's interests in England amid the Investiture Controversy. For his resistance to the English kings William II and Henry I, he was exiled twice: once from 1097 to 1100 and then from 1105 to 1107. While in exile, he helped guide the Greek Catholic bishops of southern Italy to adopt Roman Rites at the Council of Bari. He worked for the primacy of Canterbury over the Archbishop of York and over the bishops of Wales, and at his death he appeared to have been successful; however, Pope Paschal II later reversed the papal decisions on the matter and restored York's earlier status.

The Paris Commune (French: Commune de Paris, pronounced [kɔ.myn də pa.ʁi]) was a French revolutionary government that seized power in Paris on 18 March 1871 and controlled parts of the city until 28 May 1871. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the French National Guard had defended Paris, and working class radicalism grew among its soldiers. Following the establishment of the French Third Republic in September 1870 (under French chief-executive Adolphe Thiers from February 1871) and the complete defeat of the French Army by the Germans by March 1871, soldiers of the National Guard seized control of the city on 18 March. The Communards killed two French Army generals and refused to accept the authority of the Third Republic; instead, the radicals set about establishing their own independent government.

The Commune governed Paris for two months, promoting policies that tended toward a progressive, anti-religious system, which was an eclectic mix of many 19th-century schools of thought. These policies included the separation of church and state, self-policing, the remission of rent, the abolition of child labor, and the right of employees to take over an enterprise deserted by its owner. The Commune closed all Catholic churches and schools in Paris. Feminist, communist, old-style social democracy (a mix of reformism and revolutionism), and anarchist/Proudhonist currents, among other socialist types, played important roles in the Commune.

John Duns Scotus OFM (/ˈskoʊtəs/ SKOH-təs; Ecclesiastical Latin: [duns ˈskɔtus], "Duns the Scot"; c. 1265/66 – 8 November 1308) was a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, university professor, philosopher and theologian. He is considered among the most important philosopher-theologians in Western Christendom during the last part of the medieval period, together with Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure and William of Ockham.

Duns Scotus has had considerable influence on both Catholic and secular thought. The doctrines for which he is best known are the "univocity of being", that existence is the most abstract concept we have, applicable to everything that exists; the formal distinction, a way of distinguishing between different formalities of the same thing; and the idea of haecceity, the property supposed to be in each individual thing that makes it an individual (i.e. a certain "thisness"). Duns Scotus also developed a complex argument for the existence of God, and argued for the Immaculate Conception of Mary. The intellectual tradition derived from Scotus' work is called Scotism.

Pope Gregory VII (Latin: Gregorius VII; c. 1015 – 25 May 1085), born Hildebrand of Sovana (Italian: Ildebrando di Soana), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 22 April 1073 to his death in 1085. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church.

One of the great reforming popes, he initiated the Gregorian Reform, and is perhaps best known for the part he played in the Investiture Controversy, his dispute with Emperor Henry IV to establish the primacy of papal authority and the new canon law governing the election of the pope by the College of Cardinals. He was also at the forefront of developments in the relationship between the emperor and the papacy during the years before he became pope. He was the first pope to introduce a policy of obligatory celibacy for the clergy, which had until then commonly married, and also attacked the practice of simony.

Rome is the capital city and most populated comune (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special comune named Roma Capitale with 2,746,984 residents in 1,287.36 km (497.1 sq mi), Rome is the third most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. The Metropolitan City of Rome Capital, with a population of 4,223,885 residents, is the most populous metropolitan city in Italy. Its metropolitan area is the third-most populous within Italy. Rome is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio (Latium), along the shores of the Tiber Valley. Vatican City (the smallest country in the world and headquarters of the worldwide Catholic Church under the governance of the Holy See) is an independent country inside the city boundaries of Rome, the only existing example of a country within a city. Rome is often referred to as the City of Seven Hills due to its geography, and also as the "Eternal City". Rome is generally considered to be one of the cradles of Western civilization and Western Christian culture, and the centre of the Catholic Church.

Rome's history spans 28 centuries. While Roman mythology dates the founding of Rome at around 753 BC, the site has been inhabited for much longer, making it a major human settlement for over three millennia and one of the oldest continuously occupied cities in Europe. The city's early population originated from a mix of Latins, Etruscans, and Sabines. Eventually, the city successively became the capital of the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and is regarded by many as the first-ever Imperial city and metropolis. It was first called The Eternal City (Latin: Urbs Aeterna; Italian: La Città Eterna) by the Roman poet Tibullus in the 1st century BC, and the expression was also taken up by Ovid, Virgil, and Livy. Rome is also called Caput Mundi (Capital of the World).

Pope Leo X (Italian: Leone X; born Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, 11 December 1475 – 1 December 1521) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 9 March 1513 to his death in December 1521.

Born into the prominent political and banking Medici family of Florence, Giovanni was the second son of Lorenzo de' Medici, ruler of the Florentine Republic, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1489. Following the death of Pope Julius II, Giovanni was elected pope after securing the backing of the younger members of the College of Cardinals. Early on in his rule he oversaw the closing sessions of the Fifth Council of the Lateran, but struggled to implement the reforms agreed. In 1517 he led a costly war that succeeded in securing his nephew Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici as Duke of Urbino, but reduced papal finances.