The Bishop of Rome is the Pope, not
vice-versa.
When the Cardinals enter into conclave
sometime in the next few weeks, it is not so much to elect a Pope as
it is to choose a bishop for the diocese of Rome. That man will be
Pope in virtue of his being the bishop of Rome.
The conclave
itself hints at the way bishops were chosen in the first centuries of
the Church. In some areas, all the faithful had a voice (that is
basically how St. Ambrose was chosen as bishop of Milan in 374). In
other local Churches, the clergy came together as a “college” or
congress to pick the one who would be chief shepherd among them. In a
city the size of Rome, this college was composed of the leaders of
the original “parishes” of Rome—which you can still visit today
(though their ruins are ten feet below the ground level of modern
Rome). Even now, each Cardinal is honorary pastor of a Roman parish,
called his “titular” Church, so that symbolically, at least, the
bishop is still chosen by a group of Roman clergy.
But why Rome? Wasn't Jerusalem
the center of Christianity in biblical times? Why isn't the bishop of
Jerusalem the Pope?
This hearkens back to Jesus choice of
not a city, but a particular person to be the “rock” on
which he would build his Church. That person was Peter.
If Jerusalem had remained Peter's
center of ministry, then today's bishop of Jerusalem might indeed
have been Pope (most likely of a tiny, strongly Jewish Christian
community—if anyone survived the destruction of the city by Rome in
70 AD).
In God's providence, Peter realized
early on that he had a universal ministry: he himself “gave
orders” that the devout Gentile Cornelius be baptized (Acts 10:
34-38) without first becoming a Jew through circumcision. With an
increasing number of Gentile converts in the vast city of Antioch
(modern day Antakya, Turkey), Peter moved there. (The Maronite
Patriarch of Antioch boasts of being “the successor of St. Peter in
the See of Antioch.”)
But Peter did not stay in Antioch: like
Paul, he was drawn to the capital city, to Rome. And it was there
that he died, by order of Nero, crucified in the “circus”
(racetrack) by the Collis Vaticanus (Vatican Hill) across the Tiber
from the city center. From then on, every chief shepherd of the
Church of Rome could only ever be the successor of St. Peter.
It is this connection to St. Peter that
designates the bishop of Rome not just the shepherd of one diocese
among many but the visible center of unity for all the churches of
the world. In other words, the Pope.
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The North American College (seminary) has an interesting list of the ancient parishes ("station churches") of Rome, along with a Google map (with photographs of some of the churches) and other features.
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This is #2 in a series of 7 Things Every Catholic Should Know about the Papacy.
Here is the #1 Thing Every Catholic Should Know
For a History of the Popes by a reliable Catholic scholar, try the one by John O'Malley, SJ.
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