Crosier in the context of "Sovereign entity"

Sovereignty can generally be defined as supreme, independent control and lawmaking authority over a territory. It finds expression in the power to rule and make law. Sovereignty entails hierarchy within a state as well as external autonomy for states. In any state, sovereignty is assigned to the person, body or institution that has the ultimate authority over other people and to change existing laws. In political theory, sovereignty is a substantive term designating supreme legitimate authority over some polity. Under international law, sovereign states are all considered equal, and no state can interfere with the internal affairs of another sovereign state. While Article 2(7) of the UN Charter explicitly recognizes the sovereignty of states, and in general there is a principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of sovereign states, the UN Security Council’s Chapter VII powers clearly contemplate the use of force against a state when necessary to restore peace. Further, the recent Responsibility to Protect (R2P) authorizes the United Nations to take action to “avert a humanitarian catastrophe” within a state when that state’s government cannot or will not act.

A state is generally considered to have sovereignty over a territory when it has consistently exercised state authority there without objection from other states. De jure sovereignty refers to the legal right to do so; de facto sovereignty refers to the factual ability to do so. This can become an issue of special concern upon the failure of the usual expectation that de jure and de facto sovereignty exist at the place and time of concern, and reside within the same organization.

In the Catholic Church, a bishop is an ordained minister who holds the fullness of the sacrament of holy orders and is responsible for teaching doctrine, governing Catholics in his jurisdiction, sanctifying the world and representing the church. Catholics trace the origins of the office of bishop to the apostles, who it is believed were endowed with a special charism and office by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Catholics believe this special charism and office has been transmitted through an unbroken succession of bishops by the laying on of hands in the sacrament of holy orders.

Diocesan bishops—known as eparchial bishops in the Eastern Catholic Churches—are assigned to govern local regions within the Catholic Church known as dioceses in the Latin Church and eparchies in the Eastern Churches. Bishops are collectively known as the College of Bishops and can hold such additional titles as archbishop, cardinal, patriarch, or pope. As of 2020, there were approximately 5,600 living bishops total in the Latin and Eastern churches of the Catholic Church.

The title archimandrite (/ˌɑːrkɪˈmændraɪt/; Greek: ἀρχιμανδρίτης, romanized: archimandritēs), used in Eastern Christianity, originally referred to a superior abbot (hegumenos, Greek: ἡγούμενος, present participle of the verb meaning "to lead") whom a bishop appointed to supervise several "ordinary" abbots and monasteries, or as the abbot of some especially great and important monastery, but nowadays it is most often used purely as a title of honor (with no connection to any actual monastery) and is bestowed on a hieromonk as a mark of respect or gratitude for service to the Church.

This title is only given to those priests who have been tonsured monks, while distinguished non-monastic (typically married) priests would be given the title of protopresbyter. In history, some women were able to obtain that title, notably when cross-dressing as male monks, such as Susanna the Deaconess.

The Concordat of Worms (Latin: Concordatum Wormatiense; German: Wormser Konkordat), also referred to as the Pactum Callixtinum or Pactum Calixtinum, was an agreement between the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire which regulated the procedure for the appointment of bishops and abbots in the Empire. Signed on 23 September 1122 in the German city of Worms by Pope Callixtus II and Emperor Henry V, the agreement set an end to the Investiture Controversy, a conflict between state and church over the right to appoint religious office holders that had begun in the middle of the 11th century.

By signing the concordat, Henry renounced his right to invest bishops and abbots with ring and crosier, and opened ecclesiastical appointments in his realm to canonical elections. Callixtus, in turn, agreed to the presence of the emperor or his officials at the elections and granted the emperor the right to intervene in the case of disputed outcomes. The emperor was also allowed to perform a separate ceremony in which he would invest bishops and abbots with a sceptre, representing the lands that constituted the temporalities associated with their episcopal see.

An abbess (Latin: abbatissa) is the female superior of a community of nuns in an abbey.