The pope, in addition to being the Bishop of Rome and spiritual head of the Catholic Church, is also the Patriarch of the Latin Rite.

Originally, however, this referred to certain key priests of important churches of the Diocese of Rome, who were recognized as the cardinal priests, the important priests chosen by the pope to advise him in his duties as Bishop of Rome ( the Latin cardo means " hinge ").

The pope ( from ; from ( pappas ), a child's word for father ) is the Bishop of Rome and the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church.

The Pope derives his pontificate from being Bishop of Rome but is not required to live there ; according to the Latin formula ubi Papa, ibi Curia, wherever the Pope resides is the central government of the Church, provided that the pope is Bishop of Rome.

" On 10 June 1941, the pope commented on the problems of the Reichskonkordat in a letter to the Bishop of Passau, in Bavaria: " The history of the Reichskonkordat shows, that the other side lacked the most basic prerequisites to accept minimal freedoms and rights of the Church, without which the Church simply cannot live and operate, formal agreements notwithstanding ".

Among his first acts as pope were the restitution of Formosus as Cardinal Bishop of Portus and the anathematizing of Photius.

During the pontificate of Boniface, Mellitus, the first Bishop of London, went to Rome " to consult the pope on important matters relative to the newly established English Church ".

His notable acts as pope include the unprecedented privilege of empowering Francis of Apt, a Franciscan friar, to confer the clerical tonsure and minor orders on Louis of Toulouse ( who would later become Bishop of Toulouse ), the son of the King of Sicily.

After Constantine ’ s death on 9 April 715, Gregory was elected pope, and was consecrated as Bishop of Rome on 19 May 715.

He was elected pope by popular acclamation on 11 February 731, but was not formally consecrated as Bishop of Rome until 18 March after receiving the approval of the Byzantine exarch in Ravenna.

The Vatican legal system is rooted in canon law but ultimately is decided by the pope ; the Bishop of Rome as the Supreme Pontiff, " has the fullness of legislative, executive and judicial powers.

The Bishop of Avignon was chancellor of the university from 1303 to 1475, after 1475 the bishop became and Archbishop, but remained chancellor of the university. The papal vice-legate, generally a bishop, represented the civil power ( in this case the pope ) and was chiefly a judicial officer, ranking higher than the Primicerius ( Rector ).

It is said by some sources that Wallace travelled to France and fought for the French King against the English during their own ongoing war while Bishop Lamberton of St Andrews, who gave much support to the Scottish cause, went and spoke to the pope.

As pope, he continued the policy of his predecessor Leo who, in his contest with Hilary of Arles, had obtained from Valentinian III a famous rescript of 445 confirming the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome.

Silvanus, Bishop of Calahorra, had violated the church laws by his episcopal ordinations, and the pope was asked for his decision.

The bearer of their letter to the pope was the presbyter Irenaeus, soon to become Bishop of Lyon.

Four bishops ( Henri Arnauld, Bishop of Angers ( brother of Antoine and Angélique Arnauld ); Nicolas Choart de Buzenval, Bishop of Beauvais ; François-Étienne Caulet, Bishop of Pamiers ; and Nicolas Pavillon, Bishop of Alet ) sided with Port-Royal, arguing that the French Assembly of the Clergy could not command French Catholics to subscribe to something which was not required by the pope.

Clement agreed, and appointed César d ' Estrées, Bishop of Laon as mediator in the matter ( he was to be assisted by two bishops who had signed the letter to the pope, Louis Henri de Pardaillan de Gondrin, Archbishop of Sens and Félix Vialart de Herse, Bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne ).

Pope John XXII himself held heterodox views about the Last Judgement and was a very political pope asserting excessive authority over the Emperor whilst continuing to maintain the Avignon exile, itself a scandal to the Papacy since the Pope must be Bishop of Rome and must, by canon law, live in his Diocese.

There are a great many bishops who have never had a cross on their bosom, nor a mitre on their head, who appeal not to the authority of the Pope at Rome, but to the Almighty Dollar, a pope much nearer home.

In abbeys exempt from the ( arch ) bishop's diocesan jurisdiction, the confirmation and benediction had to be conferred by the pope in person, the house being taxed with the expenses of the new abbot's journey to Rome.

According to Asser, because of Pope Marinus ’ friendship with King Alfred, the pope granted an exemption to any Anglo-Saxons residing within Rome from tax or tribute.

In 893, a new pope, Formosus, not trusting the newly crowned co-emperors Guy and Lambert, sent an embassy to Omuntesberch, where Arnulf was holding a Diet with Svatopluk, to request Arnulf come and liberate Italy, where he would be crowned in Rome.

Finding Rome locked against him and held by Ageltrude, he had to take the city by force on 21 February 896, freeing the pope.

Finally, Nicholas III ( pope 1277 – 1280 ) adopted this version both for the curia and for the basilicas of Rome, and thus made its position secure.

In 1059, the right of electing the pope was reserved to the principal clergy of Rome and the bishops of the seven suburbicarian sees.

The election of the pope was not always reserved to the cardinals ; the pope was originally elected by the clergy and the people of the diocese of Rome.

Certain clerics in many dioceses at the time, not just that of Rome, were said to be the key personnel — the term gradually became exclusive to Rome to indicate those entrusted with electing the bishop of Rome, the pope.

The third letter is extant, but no trace of an answer appears in St. Gregory's correspondence, owing probably to the fact that the pope died in 604, about the time it reached Rome.

The whole, however, may be judged from this fragment: " We Irish, though dwelling at the far ends of the earth, are all disciples of St. Peter and St. Paul ... we are bound to the Chair of Peter, and although Rome is great and renowned, through that Chair alone is she looked on as great and illustrious among us ... On account of the two Apostles of Christ, you pope are almost celestial, and Rome is the head of the whole world, and of the Churches ".

Pope Gregory XI's return to Rome in 1377, followed by his death and the controversial election of his successor, Pope Urban VI, resulted in the defection of a number of cardinals and the election of a rival pope based at Avignon in 1378.

After thirty years of schism, the Council of Pisa had sought to resolve the situation by deposing the two claimant popes and elected a new pope, Alexander V. The council claimed that in such a situation, a council of bishops had greater authority than just one bishop, even if he were the bishop of Rome.

Though Alexander and his successor, John XXIII, gained widespread support, especially at the cost of the Avignon pope, the schism remained, now involving not two but three claimants: Gregory XII at Rome, Benedict XIII at Avignon and John XXIII.

The importance and meaning of coronation ceremonies and regalia also varied within the tradition: for instance Holy Roman Emperors could only be crowned emperor by the pope, which meant the coronation ceremony usually took place in Rome, often several years after these emperors had ascended to the throne ( as " king ") in their home country.

This issue came to the fore in the first part of the eleventh century when Rome and the pope sought autonomy from the Holy Roman Emperor.

In 863, at a synod in Rome the pope deposed Photios, and reappointed Ignatius as the rightful patriarch.

Consequently, canon 351 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law requires that a cardinal be at least in the order of priesthood at his appointment, and that those who are not already bishops must receive episcopal consecration, a rule from which dispensation may be obtained from the pope, as by Cardinals Roberto Tucci, Albert Vanhoye, Domenico Bartolucci and most recently Karl Josef Becker.

In addition to the named cardinals, the pope may name secret cardinals or cardinals in pectore ( Latin for in the breast ).

If conditions change, so that the pope judges it safe to make the appointment public, he may do so at any time.

He referred to the conditions under which the condemnation of his 18 theses was brought about ; and the same may be said of his books dealing with the Church, the office of king, and the power of the pope – all completed within the space of two years ( 1378 – 79 ).

No pope may say that he is the head, for he cannot say that he is elect or even a member of the Church.

The pope may have utilized the forged Donation of Constantine to gain this land, which formed the core of the Papal States.

But the decision proved the precursor of the long Avignon Papacy, the " Babylonian captivity " ( 1309 – 77 ), in Petrarch's phrase, and marks a point from which the decay of the strictly Catholic conception of the pope as universal bishop may be dated.

If it be the fact, as is asserted by a contemporary, that Benedict validly acquiesced in his deposition, and if, as seems certain, no further protest was made against Leo's position, he may well be regarded as a true pope from July 964, to his death in 965, about the month of March.

A large sum of gold that the pope possibly carried with him or Attila ´ s logistical and strategic concerns may have been the true reasons for Attila's mercy.

The Roman Catholic Church also developed on the parallel and complementary idea of papal infallibility — that the pope may speak in the same capacity ; this idea was finally defined dogmatically at the First Vatican Council of 1870 and incorporated into doctrine.

Edward Gibbon wrote of her that the " influence of two sister prostitutes, Marozia and Theodora was founded on their wealth and beauty, their political and amorous intrigues: the most strenuous of their lovers were rewarded with the Roman tiara, and their reign may have suggested to darker ages the fable of a female pope.

The only person who could crown Eustace was Archbishop Theobald, who may well have seen the coronation of Eustace only as a guarantee of further civil war after Stephen's death ; the Archbishop refused to crown Eustace without agreement from the current pope, Eugene III, and the matter reached an impasse.

One reason the archbishop may have backed down was that he was in debt to the Italian banking family of the Riccardi, who also were bankers to Edward and the pope, and Peckham was under threat of excommunication from the pope unless he repaid the loans.

It may well be that the pallium was introduced as a liturgical badge of the pope, or that it was adopted in imitation of its counterpart, the pontifical omophor, already in vogue in the Eastern Church.

The use of the pallium is reserved to the pope and archbishops who are metropolitans, but the latter may not use it until it is conferred upon them by the pope, normally at the celebration of the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul in June.

It was against this backdrop that Robert refused to consecrate Spearhafoc, although there is no other evidence that Robert embraced the reform position, and his claim that the pope forbade the consecration may have had more to do with finding an easy excuse than any true desire for reform.

Dagobert may well have visualised turning Jerusalem into a fiefdom of the pope, however his full intentions are not clear.

That the pope or bishop anoints, makes tonsures, ordains, consecrates, or dresses differently from the laity, may make a hypocrite or an idolatrous oil-painted icon, but it in no way makes a Christian or spiritual human being.

On the other hand the presence of these magnates at these two great assemblies may merely have been necessary to confirm Charles ' illegitimate son as his heir ( Waiblingen ), a plan which failed when the pope refused to attend, and then to confirm Louis instead ( Kirchen ).

Beyond these two, theologians disagree on which, if any, previous papal declarations may be considered as possible examples of extraordinary infallible dogmatic definitions on the part of a pope.

Onofrio Panvinio, in the revised edition of Bartolomeo Platina's book about the popes, added an elaborate note indicating that the legend of Pope Joan may be based on a mistress of John XII: Panvinius, in a note to Platina's account of pope Joan, suggests that the licentiousness of John XII, who, among his numerous mistresses, had one called Joan, who exercised the chief influence at Rome during his pontificate, may have given rise to the story of " pope Joan.