The Catholic Church (Latin: Ecclesia Catholica), also called the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with an estimated 1.28 to 1.41 billion baptized members worldwide as of 2026. It consists of 24 autonomous (sui iuris) churches—the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches—organized into nearly 3,500 dioceses and eparchies governed by bishops. Throughout history, the church has had a large role in the development of Western civilization. Catholic communities are present worldwide through missions, immigration, and conversions. The majority of Catholics live in the Global South, reflecting rapid demographic growth in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as well as secularization in parts of Europe and North America.
Catholic doctrine is rooted in the Nicene Creed and holds that the church is the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church" founded by Jesus Christ. It teaches that bishops are the successors of the apostles and that the pope—the bishop of Rome—is the successor of Saint Peter the Apostle, entrusted with a unique and primary pastoral role. The pope serves as the head of the church; the Diocese of Rome forms his local jurisdiction, while the Holy See serves as the church's central governing authority through the Roman Curia. Apostolic teaching is understood to be transmitted through Scripture and sacred tradition, interpreted by the magisterium, the church's teaching authority. Catholic liturgical life includes the Roman Rite, other rites of the Latin Church, and the liturgical traditions of the Eastern Catholic Churches. Religious orders, monastic communities, and lay movements contribute to a wide range of theological and devotional expressions within Catholicism globally.
Among the church's seven sacraments, the Eucharist is seen as the source and summit of the Christian life and is celebrated in the Mass. Catholics believe that through consecration by a priest, the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The Virgin Mary is venerated as the Mother of God and honored through dogmas such as the Immaculate Conception, perpetual virginity, and Assumption, including devotional practices. Catholic social teaching emphasizes care for the poor, the sick, and the marginalized. The church operates tens of thousands of educational, medical, and charitable institutions worldwide, becoming the largest non-governmental provider of education and health care.
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Its relations with other Christian traditions have been shaped by divisions. The separation between the church and Eastern Orthodox churches within the state Roman church developed gradually and was solidified by the Fourth Crusade, amidst theological and political disputes, especially over papal authority. Earlier schisms occurred with the Church of the East after the Council of Ephesus (431) and with the Oriental Orthodox Churches following the Council of Chalcedon (451). The 16th-century Protestant Reformation led to new Christian traditions and prompted the Catholic Counter‑Reformation. Since the late 20th century, the church has faced criticism on its teachings on sexuality, clerical celibacy, the ordination of women, and its handling of clerical sexual abuse.
Name
Catholic (from Greek: καθολικός, romanized: katholikos, lit. 'universal') is first attested as an adjective used to describe the church in the early second century. The first known use of the phrase "the catholic church" (Greek: καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία, romanized: katholikḕ ekklēsía) appears in a letter written around AD 100 by Ignatius of Antioch to the Smyrnaeans, which reads: "Wheresoever the bishop shall appear, there let the people be, even as where Jesus may be, there is the universal [katholike] Church." In the Catechetical Lectures (c. 350) of Cyril of Jerusalem, the name "Catholic Church" was used to distinguish it from other groups that also called themselves "the church". The "Catholic" notion was further emphasized in the edict De fide catolica, issued in 380 by Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule over both the eastern and western halves of the Roman Empire, when he established the state church of the Roman Empire.
Since the East–West Schism of 1054, the Eastern Orthodox Church has taken the adjective "Orthodox" as its distinctive epithet; its official name continues to be the "Orthodox Catholic Church". The Latin Church was described as "Catholic", with that description also denoting those in communion with the Holy See after the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, when those who ceased to be in communion became known as Protestants.
While the "Roman Church" has been used to describe the pope's Diocese of Rome since the Fall of the Western Roman Empire and into the Early Middle Ages (6th–10th century), "Roman Catholic Church" has been applied to the whole church in the English language since the Protestant Reformation in the late 16th century. Further, some refer to the Latin Church as "Roman Catholic" in distinction from the Eastern Catholic churches. "Roman Catholic" has occasionally appeared in documents produced by the Holy See, and has been used by certain national episcopal conferences and local dioceses.
The name "Catholic Church" for the whole church is used in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1990) and the Code of Canon Law (1983). "Catholic Church" is also used in the documents of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), the First Vatican Council (1869–1870), the Council of Trent (1545–1563) and numerous other official documents.
History
Apostolic era and papacy
The New Testament, particularly the Gospels, records Jesus' activities and teaching, his appointment of the Twelve Apostles, and his Great Commission to them, instructing them to continue his work. The Acts of Apostles recounts the founding of the Christian Church and the spread of its message throughout the Roman Empire. The Catholic Church teaches that its public ministry began on Pentecost, which occurred fifty days after the date on which Christ is believed to have risen from the dead. At Pentecost, the apostles are held to have received the Holy Spirit, preparing them for their mission of leading the church. The Catholic Church further teaches that the college of bishops, led by the bishop of Rome, is the successor to the apostles.
In the account of the Confession of Peter found in the Gospel of Matthew, Christ designates Peter as the "rock" upon which his Church will be built. The Catholic Church considers the bishop of Rome, the pope, to be the successor of Saint Peter. Some scholars hold that Peter was the first bishop of Rome, while other scholars argue that the institution of the papacy does not depend on the view that Peter was bishop of Rome, or even on the claim that he ever resided in Rome.
Many scholars maintain that a church structure consisting of multiple presbyters/bishops persisted in Rome until the mid-2nd century, when a structure with a single bishop and multiple presbyters was adopted, and that later writers retrospectively applied the title "bishop of Rome" to the most prominent members of the clergy in the earlier period, as well as to Peter himself. On this basis, Bart D. Ehrman argues Peter "could not have been the first bishop of Rome", while also noting that the church "did not have anyone as its bishop until about a hundred years after Peter's death." Raymond E. Brown likewise states that it is anachronistic to speak of Peter in terms of a local bishop of Rome, but that Christians of that period would have regarded Peter as exercising roles that contributed "to the development of the role of the papacy in the subsequent church". These roles, Brown argues, "contributed enormously to seeing the bishop of Rome ... as the successor of Peter ... for the church universal".
Antiquity and Roman Empire
The Roman Empire facilitated the spread of new ideas through its extensive network of roads and waterways, the relative security of the Pax Romana, and the promotion of a common culture with strong Greek influences, all of which allowed ideas to be more easily expressed and understood. However, unlike most religions in the Roman Empire, Christianity required its followers to renounce all other gods, a practice inherited from Judaism. Because Christians refused to participate in pagan festivals and civic rituals, they were excluded from many aspects of public life, leading some non-Christians, including government authorities, to fear that they were angering the gods and thereby threatening the peace and prosperity of the empire. The resulting prosecutions became a defining element of early Christian self-understanding until Christianity was legalized in the 4th century.
In 313, Constantine the Great—the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity—issued the Edict of Milan, which legalized the Christian faith, and he moved the imperial capital to Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey) in 330. In 380, the Edict of Thessalonica made Nicene Christianity the state church of the Roman Empire, a status that continued within the shrinking territory of the Byzantine Empire until its fall in 1453. Elsewhere, the church functioned independently of imperial authority, becoming especially evident after the East-West Schism. During the period of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, five principal sees emerged—Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem—formalized in the mid-6th century, arranged by Justinian I, the Byzantine emperor from 527 to 565, as the pentarchy.
In 451, the Council of Chalcedon, in a canon of disputed validity, elevated the see of Constantinople to a role "second in eminence and power to the bishop of Rome". From c. 350 – c. 500, the bishops, or popes, of Rome steadily increased their authority through consistently intervening in helping orthodox leaders during theological disputes, which encouraged appeals to them. Emperor Justinian, under his controlled territories, established a form of caesaropapism where he could regulate "the minutest details of worship and discipline" and "theologian opinions" in the church—establishing imperial influence over Rome and other Western territories again. This act created the Byzantine Papacy period (537–752) in which popes required approval from the emperor or his representative for consecration, leading to most being selected by the emperor from his Greek-speaking subjects, which created a "melting pot" of Western and Eastern Christian traditions in art and liturgy.
In the following centuries, Germanic tribes who invaded the Roman Empire adopted Christianity in its Arian form, which the Council of Nicaea declared heretical, causing discord between Germanic rulers and Catholic subjects. In 497, Clovis I, the Frankish ruler, converted to orthodox Catholicism and he aligned himself with the papacy and the monastic communities—an act that unified Germanic rulers and Catholic subjects for the most part. Following his lead, the Visigoths converted to Catholicism in 589, and the Lombards in Italy gradually adopted it during the 7th century.
Western Christianity—particularly through its monastic institutions—played a massive role in preserving classical civilization, including its artistic traditions and literacy. Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–543), one of the founders of Western monasticism, with his Rule, exerted a crucial influence on European culture with his appropriation of the church's monastic spiritual heritage and his preservation and transmission of ancient culture with the spread of the Benedictine tradition. During this time, monastic Ireland became a center of scholarship; early Irish missionaries such as Columbanus and Columba spread Christianity and established monasteries across continental Europe.
Middle Ages and Renaissance
From Late Antiquity to the dawn of the modern age, the Catholic Church held a dominant influence on Western civilization, being the primary sponsor of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Mannerist, and Baroque styles in art, architecture, and music—including visual artists like Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Tintoretto, Titian, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and Caravaggio. A Stanford University historian Paul Legutko said the church is "at the center of the development of the values, ideas, science, laws, and institutions" of Western civilization.
Monks established the first universities in Europe in the time of Western Christendom. In higher education, several older cathedral schools became universities beginning in the 11th century, including the University of Oxford, University of Paris, and University of Bologna. Dating back to 6th-century AD, monks and nuns spearheaded higher education with Christian cathedral schools or monastic schools. These new universities expanded their curriculums to include academic programs for clerics, lawyers, civil servants, and physicians. Thus, due to its initial origins, the university is generally regarded as starting in a Medieval Christian setting.
Massive mid-7th century Islamic invasions elongated the struggles of power between Christianity and Islam throughout the Mediterranean Basis; the Byzantine Empire lost its lands of the eastern patriarchates of Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch were reduced to Constantinople, the empire's capital, and the Frankish state, centered away from the Islamic domination of the Mediterranean, evolved into the dominant power that shaped the Western Europe of the Middle Ages. Battles in Toulouse and Tours halted Islamic advancements in the West; a failed siege of Constantinople halted them in the East. In 751, the Byzantine Empire lost the city of Ravenna, which governed the small fragments of Italy, including Rome, to the Lombards, meaning confirmation by a no longer existent exarch was not asked during the election of Pope Stephen II in 752—the papacy had to look elsewhere for a civil power to protect it. The Frankish king Pepin the Short conquered the Lombards in 754 at the urgent request of Pope Stephen, and then gifted the lands back to the pope, initiating the time of the Papal States. In the 860s, Rome and the Byzantine East had a conflict during the Photian schism, as Photius criticized the Latin West for adding the filioque clause, after being excommunicated by Nicholas I, causing unresolved issues that led to further divisions.
In the 11th century the efforts of Hildebrand of Sovana led to the creation of the College of Cardinals to elect new popes, starting with Pope Alexander II in the papal election of 1061. When Alexander II died, Hildebrand was elected to succeed him, as Pope Gregory VII. The basic election system of the College of Cardinals which Gregory VII helped establish has continued to function into the 21st century. Pope Gregory VII further initiated the Gregorian Reforms regarding the independence of the clergy from secular authority. This led to the Investiture Controversy between the church and the Holy Roman emperors, over which had the authority to appoint bishops and popes.
In 1095 the Byzantine emperor, Alexius I, appealed to Pope Urban II for help against renewed Muslim invasions in the Byzantine–Seljuk wars, which caused Urban to launch the First Crusade aimed at aiding the Byzantine Empire and returning the Holy Land to Christian control. In the 11th century strained relations between the primarily Greek church and the Latin Church separated them in the East–West Schism, partially due to conflicts over papal authority. The Fourth Crusade and the sacking of Constantinople by renegade crusaders proved the final breach.
In the twelfth century, inquisitions began in the Catholic Kingdom of France in response to the Albigensians. The system spread throughout other European countries in the succeeding centuries, through multiple forms: first as individual inquisitors sporadically appointed for certain problem areas by popes, then as state-sponsored tribunals. The ad hoc use of torture by secular medieval judges was common, and the directives governing inquisitions progressively allowed various situations where non-maiming, non-bloody torture could or must be used to corroborate testimony, not only on some classes of accused but sometimes even on denouncers and witnesses.
In the early 13th century mendicant orders were founded by Francis of Assisi and Dominic de Guzmán. The studia conventualia and studia generalia of the mendicant orders played a large role in the transformation of church-sponsored cathedral schools and palace schools, such as that of Charlemagne at Aachen, into the prominent universities of Europe. Scholastic theologians and philosophers such as the Dominican priest Thomas Aquinas studied and taught at these studia. Aquinas' Summa Theologica was an intellectual milestone in its synthesis of the legacy of ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle with the content of Christian revelation.
A growing sense of church-state conflicts marked the 14th century. In 1309, to escape instability in Rome, Pope Clement V became the first of seven popes to reside in the fortified city of Avignon in southern France during a period known as the Avignon Papacy. The Avignon Papacy ended in 1376 when the pope returned to Rome. In 1378 a 38-year-long Western Schism began, with claimants to the papacy located in Rome, Avignon and, after 1409, Pisa. The matter was largely resolved in 1414–1418 at the Council of Constance, with the claimants in Rome and Pisa agreeing to resign and the third claimant excommunicated by the cardinals, who held a new election naming Martin V pope.
In 1438 the Council of Florence convened, which featured a strong dialogue focussed on understanding the theological differences between the East and West, with the hope of reuniting the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Several eastern churches reunited, forming the majority of the Eastern Catholic Churches.
Age of Discovery and Counter-Reformation
The Age of Discovery beginning in the 15th century saw the expansion of Western Europe's political and cultural influence worldwide. Because of the rise in power overseas of strongly Catholic nations of Spain and Portugal (as well as France), Catholicism was spread to the Americas, Asia and Oceania by explorers, conquistadors, and missionaries, as well as by the conversion of people who lived in these societies to the Catholic faith. Pope Alexander VI had awarded sovereignty rights over most of the newly discovered lands to Spain and Portugal (later confirmed by the Treaty of Tordesillas) and the ensuing patronato system allowed state authorities, not the Vatican, to control all clerical appointments in the new colonies. In 1521 the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan made the first Catholic converts in the Philippines. Elsewhere, Portuguese missionaries under the Spanish Jesuit Francis Xavier evangelized in India, China and Japan. The French colonization of the Americas beginning in the 16th century established a Catholic Francophone population and forbade non-Catholics to settle in Quebec.
In 1415 popular Bohemian preacher Jan Hus was burned at the stake for refusing to recant Wycliffite heresies. His "hot-headed" reform efforts presaged Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar in Germany, who sent a list of topics for academic disputation, the Ninety-five Theses, to several bishops in 1517. His theses protested against some Catholic doctrines as well as contemporary practices such as the supposed sale of indulgences, and these were the start of a rapidly escalating series of inflammatory works ending with On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520) which accused the Pope of being the anti-Christ: this led to his excommunication in 1521. In Switzerland Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin and other Protestant Reformers further criticized certain Catholic teachings. These challenges developed into the Reformation, which gave birth to the great majority of Protestant denominations and also crypto-Protestantism within the Catholic Church. Meanwhile, Henry VIII of the Kingdom of England petitioned Pope Clement VII for a declaration of nullity concerning his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. When this was denied, he had the Acts of Supremacy passed to make himself Supreme Head of the Church of England, spurring the English Reformation and the eventual development of Anglicanism.
The Reformation contributed to clashes between the Protestant Schmalkaldic League and the Catholic Emperor Charles V and his allies. The first nine-year war ended in 1555 with the Peace of Augsburg but continued tensions produced a far graver conflict—the Thirty Years' War—which broke out in 1618. In France a series of conflicts termed the French Wars of Religion was fought from 1562 to 1598 between the Huguenots (French Calvinists) and the forces of the French Catholic League, which were backed and funded by a series of popes. This ended under Pope Clement VIII, who hesitantly accepted King Henry IV of France's 1598 Edict of Nantes granting civil and religious toleration to French Protestants.
The Council of Trent (1545–1563) became the driving force behind the Counter-Reformation in response to the Protestant movement. Doctrinally, it reaffirmed many central Catholic teachings such as transubstantiation, the keeping of the sacraments, and the requirement of good works anchored in love and hope to justify one's salvation, as well as faith as a necessary condition to attain such salvation. In subsequent centuries, Catholicism spread widely across the world, in part through missionaries and imperialism, although its hold on European populations declined due to the growth of religious scepticism during and after the Enlightenment.
Enlightenment and modern period
From the 17th century onward, the Enlightenment questioned the power and influence of the Catholic Church over Western society. In the 18th century, writers such as Voltaire and the Encyclopédistes wrote biting critiques of both religion and the Catholic Church. One target of their criticism was the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes by King Louis XIV of France, which ended a century-long policy of religious toleration of Protestant Huguenots. As the papacy resisted pushes for Gallicanism, the French Revolution in 1789 shifted power to the state, caused the destruction of churches, the establishment of a Cult of Reason, and the martyrdom of nuns during the Reign of Terror. In 1798 Napoleon's General Louis-Alexandre Berthier invaded the Italian Peninsula, imprisoning Pope Pius VI, who died in captivity. Napoleon later re-established the Catholic Church in France through the Concordat of 1801. The end of the Napoleonic Wars brought Catholic revival and the return of the Papal States.
In 1854 Pope Pius IX, with the support of the overwhelming majority of Catholic bishops, whom he had consulted from 1851 to 1853, proclaimed the Immaculate Conception as a dogma in the Catholic Church. In 1870 the First Vatican Council affirmed the doctrine of papal infallibility when exercised in specifically defined pronouncements, striking a blow to the rival position of conciliarism. Controversy over this and other issues resulted in a breakaway movement called the Old Catholic Church.
The Italian unification of the 1860s incorporated the Papal States, including Rome itself from 1870, into the Kingdom of Italy, thus ending the papacy's temporal power. In response Pius IX excommunicated King Victor Emmanuel II, refused payment for the land and rejected the Italian Law of Guarantees, which granted him special privileges. To avoid placing himself in visible subjection to the Italian authorities, he remained a "prisoner in the Vatican". This stand-off, which was spoken of as the Roman question, was resolved by the Lateran Treaty in 1929, whereby the Holy See acknowledged Italian sovereignty over the former Papal States in return for payment and Italy's recognition of papal sovereignty over Vatican City as a new sovereign and independent state.
Catholic missionaries generally supported, and sought to facilitate, the European imperial powers' conquest of Africa during the late nineteenth century. According to the historian of religion Adrian Hastings, Catholic missionaries were generally unwilling to defend African rights or encourage Africans to see themselves as equals to Europeans, in contrast to Protestant missionaries, who were more willing to oppose colonial injustices.
20th century
During the 20th century, the church's global reach continued to grow, despite the rise of anti-Catholic authoritarian regimes and the collapse of European colonial empires, accompanied by a general decline in religious observance in the West. Under the popes Benedict XV and Pius XII the Holy See sought to maintain public neutrality through the World Wars, acting as peace broker and delivering aid to the victims of the conflicts. In the 1960s Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council, which ushered in radical change to church ritual and practice, and in the later 20th century the long papacy of Pope John Paul II contributed to the fall of communism in Europe, and a new public and international role for the papacy. From the late 20th century, the Catholic Church has been criticized for its doctrines on sexuality, its inability to ordain women and its handling of sexual abuse cases.
The Second Vatican Council (1962–65) introduced the most significant changes to Catholic practices since the Council of Trent, four centuries before. Initiated by Pope John XXIII, this ecumenical council modernized the practices of the Catholic Church, allowing the Mass to be said in the vernacular (local language) and encouraging "fully conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations". It intended to engage the church more closely with the present world (aggiornamento), which was described by its advocates as an "opening of the windows". In addition to changes in the liturgy, it led to changes to the church's approach to ecumenism, and a call to improved relations with non-Christian religions, especially Judaism, in its document Nostra aetate.
The council, however, generated significant controversy in implementing its reforms: proponents of the "Spirit of Vatican II" such as the Swiss theologian Hans Küng said that Vatican II had "not gone far enough" to change church policies. Traditionalist Catholics, such as Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, however, strongly criticized the council, arguing that its liturgical reforms led "to the destruction of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the sacraments", among other issues. The teaching on the morality of contraception also came under scrutiny; after a series of disagreements, Humanae vitae upheld the church's prohibition of all forms of contraception.
In 1978 Pope John Paul II, formerly Archbishop of Kraków in the Polish People's Republic, became the first non-Italian pope in 455 years. His 26 1/2-year pontificate was one of the longest in history and was credited with hastening the fall of communism in Europe. John Paul II sought to evangelize an increasingly secular world. He travelled more than any other pope, visiting 129 countries, and used television and radio as means of spreading the church's teachings. He also emphasized the dignity of work and natural rights of labourers to have fair wages and safe conditions in Laborem exercens. He emphasized several church teachings, including moral exhortations against abortion, euthanasia and against the widespread use of capital punishment, in Evangelium Vitae.
21st century
Pope Benedict XVI, elected in 2005, was known for upholding traditional Christian values against secularization, and for increasing use of the Tridentine Mass as found in the Roman Missal of 1962, which he titled the "Extraordinary Form". Citing the frailties of advanced age, Benedict resigned in 2013, becoming the first pope to do so in nearly 600 years.
Pope Francis became in 2013 the first pope from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere and the first from outside Europe since the eighth-century Gregory III. Francis made efforts to further close Catholicism's estrangement with the Eastern churches. His installation was attended by Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the first time since the Great Schism of 1054 that the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has attended a papal installation, while he also met Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, head of the largest Eastern Orthodox church, in 2016; this was the first such high-level meeting between the two churches since the Great Schism of 1054. In 2017 during a visit in Egypt, Pope Francis re-established mutual recognition of baptism with the Coptic Orthodox Church.
Pope Leo XIV was elected as Pope in the 2025 conclave, following the death of Francis. He is the first Augustinian pope, the first North American pope (born in Chicago in the United States), and the first pope of Peruvian citizenship.
Organization
The Catholic Church follows an episcopal polity, led by bishops who have received the sacrament of holy orders who are given formal jurisdictions of governance within the church. There are three levels of clergy: the episcopate, composed of bishops who hold jurisdiction over a geographic area called a diocese or eparchy; the presbyterate, composed of priests ordained by bishops and who work in local dioceses or religious orders; and the diaconate, composed of deacons who assist bishops and priests in a variety of ministerial roles. Ultimately leading the entire Catholic Church is the bishop of Rome, known as the pope (Latin: papa, lit. 'father'), whose jurisdiction is called the Holy See (Sancta Sedes in Latin).
In parallel to the diocesan structure are a variety of religious institutes that function autonomously, often subject only to the authority of the pope, though sometimes subject to the local bishop. Most religious institutes only have male or female members but some have both. Additionally, lay members aid many liturgical functions during worship services. The Catholic Church has been described as the oldest multinational organization in the world.
Holy See, papacy, Roman Curia, and College of Cardinals
The hierarchy of the Catholic Church is headed by the pope, currently Pope Leo XIV, who was elected on 8 May 2025 by a papal conclave. The office of the pope is known as the papacy. The Catholic Church holds that Christ instituted the papacy upon giving the keys of Heaven to Saint Peter. His ecclesiastical jurisdiction is called the Holy See, or the Apostolic See (meaning the see of the apostle Peter). Directly serving the pope is the Roman Curia, the central governing body that administers the day-to-day business of the Catholic Church.
The pope is also sovereign of Vatican City, a small city-state entirely enclaved within the city of Rome, which is an entity distinct from the Holy See. It is as head of the Holy See, not as head of Vatican City State, that the pope receives ambassadors of states and sends them his own diplomatic representatives.
The position of cardinal is a rank of honour bestowed by popes on certain clerics, such as leaders within the Roman Curia, bishops serving in major cities and distinguished theologians. For advice and assistance in governing, the pope may turn to the College of Cardinals.
Following the death or resignation of a pope, members of the College of Cardinals who are under age 80 act as an electoral college, meeting in a papal conclave to elect a successor. Although the conclave may elect any male Catholic in the world as pope, since 1389 only cardinals have been elected.
Canon law
Catholic canon law (Latin: jus canonicum) is the system of laws and legal principles made and enforced by the hierarchical authorities of the Catholic Church to regulate its external organization and government and to order and direct the activities of Catholics toward the mission of the church. The canon law of the Latin Church was the first modern Western legal system, and is the oldest continuously functioning legal system in the West, while the distinctive traditions of Eastern Catholic canon law govern the 23 Eastern Catholic particular churches sui iuris.
Positive ecclesiastical laws, based directly or indirectly upon immutable divine law or natural law, derive formal authority in the case of universal laws from promulgation by the supreme legislator—the Supreme Pontiff—who possesses the totality of legislative, executive and judicial power in his person, while particular laws derive formal authority from promulgation by a legislator inferior to the supreme legislator, whether an ordinary or a delegated legislator. The actual subject material of the canons is not just doctrinal or moral in nature, but all-encompassing of the human condition. It has all the ordinary elements of a mature legal system: laws, courts, lawyers, judges, a fully articulated legal code for the Latin Church as well as a code for the Eastern Catholic Churches, principles of legal interpretation, and coercive penalties.
