As Pope Benedict retired, the church faced the situation of electing a new pope. But the task wasn’t so simple. In today’s day in age, Catholicism isn’t as popular as it used to be. The Church needed a pope who could give the church a new distinctiveness. A fresh face that could give the church an improvement in today’s world.
This face happened to be Pope Francis. But he wasn’t always known as Pope Francis. He is formally known as Jorge Bergoglio. The first Jesuit and Latin American pope. His Jesuit background shaped Francis into the pope he is today
Jorge has not always been the humble and modest individual that the world recognizes him as today. Becoming a Jesuit in 1969, then he was elected superior of Argentine Jesuits in 1973. He was
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So they elected a pope who would give them a great chance at combating the rapidly growing Pentecostalism. A face that would hopefully set off a revival of Catholicism. The hope was that pope Francis would bring people back to the …show more content…
A lot of western culture has misconceptions about the Catholic Church. Whether it has to do with the problems with priests over the years or misconceptions about the Catholic Church in general, the church needed a face to represent them positively and to set the church on a new track.
Statically speaking, Pope Francis is a very effective face of the church. Around 60% of the world is favorable toward Francis compared to a mere 11% unfavorable opinion, and the rest just haven’t heard of him. (PEW) Around 80% of Americans are favorable toward the Pope, compared to 56% who are favorable toward the church. (R&D). Only 5% of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of the pope.
The people love him. He is approved very well, but he is more favorable than the church. So even though the people love him, they don’t necessarily love the church. Statistics show that disassociated Catholics are in fact not coming back to the church. (R&D) There isn’t an uptick in attendance in general. Even though the Pope has a high approval rating, he is not growing the church. So even though that people love him, he isn’t bringing new members back to the church. The pope is a successful brand in the modern world, but the Catholic Church is
Elected in 1958 as a ‘caretaker Pope’, Pope John XXIII implemented the greatest reforms in the Church’s history. His involvement within the Church had played a significant contribution to the reforming of social, political and liturgical Christian traditions. During the early twentieth century, the Catholic Church still held the century old conservative beliefs and traditions as they continued to separate the Church from the secular world, therefore, disadvantaging the Church to a world that was modernising. In addition to this, the Church restricted modernist thoughts due to the belief that new theologies would threaten the power and authority of the Church, but ...
the catholics can not accept the ways of their religion (Document 6). There was also the point of
Due to the "new Pope" of the east, the pope in the west was fighting for respect and began to look for ways of reform to restore the reputation of the church. Pope Leo I began some of this reform by giving direction on how the church should care for the poor and needy, and Gregory I reorganize the financial aspects of the church to insure the church's money was going to support the missions of the church.
Roles of the Catholic Church in Western civilization has been scrambled with the times past and development of Western society. Regardless of the fact that the West is no longer entirely Catholic, the Catholic tradition is still strong in Western countries. The church has been a very important foundation of public facilities like schooling, Western art, culture and philosophy; and influential player in religion. In many ways it has wanted to have an impact on Western approaches to pros and cons in numerous areas. It has over many periods of time, spread the teachings of Jesus within the Western World and remains a foundation of continuousness connecting recent Western culture to old Western culture.-
Pope Francis ' speech to Congress on September 25th 2015 was remarkable in many ways. It was an historically significant because for the first time a Pope was invited to address the United States Congress. Pope Francis is the Vicar of Rome, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, a priest and a Bishop. When he stood before the assembly he was flanked by two prominent American Catholics, Vice President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House John Boehner. However, Pope Francis was not there to speak only to the Catholic members of the audience, his message was universal and encompassing for all. "I would like to dialogue with all of you." (Pope Francis, Speech to Congress). He defined pressing and dangerous issues for America and the world including
She examines 6 popes between 1470-1530 who she claims lead in a way similar to politicians. They lost touch with the common people both emotionally and intellectually. A little known cleric led the revolution challenging papacy that culminated in the reformation of the church. In that context, Barbara outlines that the popes were venal, immoral, and their power politics was calamitous. The faithful were distressed by their leadership, which ignored all the protests and the signs that a revolt was coming. In the end, the papal constituency lost almost half of its followers to Protestants. Barbara says that these people were driven by the greed and the urge to create a family empire that would outlive them. This chapter sums up the essence of folly in these major failures, lack of a fixed policy, over extravagance, and the illusion that their rule was
The Catholic Church has long been a fixture in society. Throughout the ages, it has withstood wars and gone through many changes. It moved through a period of extreme popularity to a time when people regarded the Church with distrust and suspicion. The corrupt people within the church ruined the ideals Catholicism once stood for and the church lost much of its power. In the Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer primarily satirizes the corruptness of the clergy members to show how the Catholic Church was beginning its decline during the Middle Ages.
“We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of his Son.” Said by St. Pope John Paul II during one of his World Youth Day homilies this quote perfectly represents the man that St. Pope John Paul II was: a bold, forgiving, selfless, and loving man. Born on May 18, 1920 in Wadowice, Poland; John Paul II suffered a number of tragedies in the early years of his life. By the age of the twenty he lost all of his immediate family, and he credits the death of his father as the point in his life when he heard the call to live a life of religious vocation. In 1939, about one year after John Paul enrolled in The Krawkow Jaggelonian University, the Nazi closed the school and to avoid deportation to Germany all able men had to work. From 1940 to 1941 his holiness did various jobs, but it was during this time period that he was seriously contemplating priesthood. In 1942 John Paul II started studying at the underground seminary run by the Archbishop of Krakow, and during this time he was hit by a truck and recovered in matter of two weeks. To him this was a confirmation of his vocation. Once the war was finished the future pope was ordained priest and was then sent to Rome for further studies. After a two year time period in Rome, His Holy Father received his doctorate in theology and returned to Poland. After serving in several parishes and becoming a well-known religious face in Poland, St. John Paul II became the bishop of Ombi. During the six year time period that his holiness was the Bishop of Ombi, he achieved one of his life’s major accomplishments: he became one of the leading thinkers on the Vatican II council. While he was one the Vatican II co...
Duffy, Eamon. Saints & Sinners: A History of the Popes. 3rd ed. (Wales: Yale University Press, 1997).
The Catholic Church is right now struggling with a very serious and grave scandal, Sexual Abuse of catholic priests and Paedophilia. Within the last year the Catholic Church has had to dispense over 100 million dollars in sexual abuse settlements*** (find source). However, the crisis became mainstream when two Catholic priests in Boston were accused of abusing over 100 boys and young men. The church worldwide has felt repercussions from this scandal. In fact, it even resulted in the call of all American cardinals who are healthy enough to travel to a summit in the Vatican with Pope John Paul the second.
of the science and he never betrayed the catholic. Frankly speaking, he is a qualified Catholic.
Francis was famous for his love of all creation. He called for simplicity of life, poverty, and humility before God. He worked to care for the poor. Thousands were drawn to his sincerity, piety, and joy. In all his actions, Francis sought to follow fully and literally the way of life demonstrated by Christ in the Gospels. He died in 1226, at the age of 44.
Vatican City is an international tourist destination for millions of people yearly yet it is home to less than a thousand people. Vatican City’s economy stems most of its annual revenue from tourism. The selling of stamps, museum admissions, tourist souvenirs, and religious publications all contribute to the care taking of the City. Created from the dust of the demolished Cappella Maggiore, the past Papal Temple, the Sistine chapel was constructed beginning in late 1473. Pope Sixtus IV gave breath to the demolition of the old chapel with the intention of building the most beautiful building for god’s people. The chapel is used approximately 50 times per year for a soulful mass. When the time comes for a new pope, the Sistine Chapel is used for the congregation of all the Cardinals for voting. A Cardinals “[is] a high ecclesiastic figure appointed by the pope to the College of Cardinals” (Cardinal). Voting comes in rounds each with different rules regarding for whom one can vote for. “The first being an ordinary ballot at which each Cardinal has to vote ; the second, termed technically the accessus, where it is allowable for a cardinal to transfer his previous vote to any candidate who may have obtained votes on that same previous occasion” (Cartwright 196). Accessus rounds can immediately follow the previous round of normal voting so there is lots of conversation following the announced results of each first round. Cardinals come from all over t...
There is no doubt that the fundamental idea of Church, faith, and prayer lived by the early Christian, needs to be rediscovered among many contemporary Christians. The conviction that the apostles had to preach the Gospel of Jesus certainly was aided by their idea of Church, faith, and prayer. In his book “Catholicism: A Journey to the Heat of the Faith”, Father Robert Barron tries to revive the idea of Catholicism that seems to weaken and lose its real sense. With my understanding of Church, faith, and prayer, I argue that because of the lack of understanding about Catholicism that exist today in our midst, many people fall short about what Catholicism really means. However, it is not my intention to answer this question.
Perhaps no other event was as influential to the rise of papacy in Rome as the decline of the Roman empire. With the decline of the empire, the church became the last refuge of stability. Without the protection of the empire, Rome was subject to poverty, disrepair, and attack from enemies.1 The rise of the papacy was a response to this situation. It was further cemented by the leadership of such men as Leo I and Gregory I, the latter sometimes referred to as the father of the medieval papacy.2 Finally, the granting of lands and authority to the bishop of Rome greatly increased the power of the Roman church.3