Appreciating Pope Francis

This Easter brought us more than the news of the Resurrection: it also ushered us into an "interregnum." Easter Day itself marked the completion of Pope Francis' ministry, as he delivered one last blessing and rode through the crowds in St. Peter's Square. He fought the good fight, especially in the final weeks of his life, refusing to take it easy. You could say he died in the saddle. And now we're in between two Popes: the one we are preparing to bury, and the one who will appear in the loggia of St. Peter's in about two weeks, to bless us with his own unique ministry.

Of course, the pundits are falling all over themselves with retrospectives and prognostications, most of which tell us more about the speaker than about the Pope or the needs of the Church. (Thankfully, there are exceptions!) Sometimes I wish I could break into the broadcasts to share the insights I found last year when I was working on a talk for a Pauline meeting. My research led me to a book that had so many "aha!" moments in it I was determined to make the most of it. The Mind of Pope Francis: Jorge Mario Bergoglio's Intellectual Journey was not an easy read. In fact, I had to read it through twice to have read it once, it was so full of philosophy. But it shed immense light on the person and thought of Pope Francis, and showed me that what we saw in his papacy was consistent with what he had always done and taught throughout his priestly ministry. And, despite the claims of his detractors on the right and the naïveté of his left-leaning fans, the Pope's principles owed nothing to subversive left-wing movements, whether intellectual or political. Instead, Francis came to the Chair of Peter with a long, long experience of practice that we could call "active listening." He built this practice by applying the insights of especially two important thinkers: 

•  the Argentine philosopher Amelia Podetti, an expert on (and sharp critic of) Hegel. Pope Francis got the theme of "peripheries" from her.  
• and the German-Italian theologian Romano Guardini (a favorite of Joseph Ratzinger, too), with his reflections on “polar opposites” and the vital importance of holding paradoxes in tension in the face of the temptation to demonize the other and not have to consider their position at all. 

Their contributions were so important that I will try to offer a rapid summary of the most important points I was able to garner from the book. Fasten your seatbelts. (All quotes are from the book, unless otherwise noted.)

Let's start in this post with Podetti's contribution:

 

The “vocation” of Latin America is “[Latin] America [seems to have been] prepared, from its beginnings and by its history…to propose a path of universalization that is different from that of super-technical societies and capable of incorporating them. Its mission and its destiny is to conceive and to bring about unity.” For Podetti, the “discovery of America meant the very real discovery of the world.” 

Podetti: “The appearance of America in history radically changes not only the view but also the meaning of humanity’s journey on earth. The discovery of the ‘New World’ represents, in reality, the discovery of the world in its totality. It is the discovery of the fact that the world was something completely different from what the people of either side had known until then. Universal history really begins with America.”

“The ‘centrality’ of Latin America means a displacement of coordinates, a correction of the envisioned ‘European’ model of the relationship between the center and the periphery. BOTH “poles” are now both center (to itself) and “periphery” (to the other).

 

“Europe ‘saw’ in a different way after Ferdinando Magellano’s circumnavigation of the earth. Looking at the world from Madrid was not like looking at it from Tierra del Fuego; the view was wider and you could see things that were hidden to those who looked at everything from the ‘center’ of the empire” (Gianni Valenti, Vatican Insider, May 28, 2016).  “The concept of the ‘periphery’ … is borrowed not from pro-Marxist theory…but rather from [Francis'] awareness of the  change of perspective that arises when one is attentive to what is (seemingly) marginal.”

 

The US was founded on philosophical principles (“self-evident truths”): that all men are created equal; that all are endowed with unalienable rights (including but not limited to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”); that governments are instituted to secure these rights and receive their “just powers” from the consent of the governed; that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish a form of government and institute a new one “to effect their safety [life] and happiness." The US “Founding Fathers” were MEN OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT, giving flesh to, applying ENLIGHTENMENT VALUES and PERSPECTIVES.

 

That was in 1776. Meanwhile, Latin American societies had been functioning continuously for over 200 years in cities, territories, and dioceses that were (or had been) part of the Spanish or Portuguese Empires.

 

So our “American” viewpoint is highly influenced by the Enlightenment, and is more in line with a European mindset than is the case with Latin America, where the OLD WORLD had already established a society before the Enlightenment even took root; even before Protestantism had swept across Europe; before the Council of Trent (1545 and 1563), and where the various indigenous cultures also influenced the development of distinct Latin-American cultural expressions. 

 

Our North American values owe much more to Protestant and enlightenment thought than to Catholicism. Many things we take for granted, and that social media memes tout as “traditional” are not traditional in any objective sense. The United States was a “great experiment,” to use the words of George Washington ("The establishment of our new Government seemed to be the last great experiment for promoting human happiness" George Washington, January 9, 1790.)

 

Latin American cultures developed more organically from a Baroque-era Catholic matrix, and received the Council of Trent, Vatical I and Vatican II from within that basically unbroken tradition (despite the betrayals of its own culture by socialists in the early 20^th century). We are the ones whose culture and cultural values represent a break from tradition (“novus ordo seclorum”).  In other words, we should not take our United States values as normative, even though they may seem so to us.

 

Back to Podetti: 

“… [Latin] American culture may be the only Christian culture, that is to say, Christian from and in its very beginning. Rightly this vocation for synthesis, the unifying virtue, this attitude to change diverse cultural traditions, particularizes and at the same time universalizes [Latin] America. There is a vocation of universality within its own cultural particularity.

 

“…starting from the defeat of the Spanish Empire…an empire that had encompassed the whole world [into America and Asia, with the Philippines], European thought began to reduce itself again to the European world, and to the European world as already indicated by traditions…that thought, from Descartes to Hegel, and still today, moves in the dimensions of the Mediterranean world, in the dimensions of the Roman Empire and its borders, and goes no further. In this sense it is clear that for this body of thought [Latin] America does not exist as an integral and essential part of the world.”

 

“Hegelian universalism remains, despite intentions, a ‘Western’ universalism, different, that is, from the Latin American model that grew in the context of Catholic universalism," the Catholic mindset that formed the warp and woof of Pope Francis' thought.

Part 2: "Opposites," not opponents: Pope Francis' unwillingness to dismiss people he disagrees with.

Part 3: Pope Francis and taking the pulse of the ordinary people (the "pueblo fiel")

7 Things Every Catholic Should Know about the Papacy (#6: Anti-Popes)

Black smoke over the Sistine roof signals the first
balloting in the  2013 Conclave.

Whatever the outcome of the current conclave, one thing is fairly certain: Once that white smoke does appear from the chimney over the Sistine Chapel, we won't be seeing an anti-pope on the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica. 

It certainly hasn't always been this way. Everything that has been done over the past weeks, from the careful setting of dates to the taking of oaths, to the command "extra omnes" when the doors of the Sistine Chapel were closed, has been ordered to ensure the freedom of the Cardinals and the validity of the papal election. It's not only a matter of interesting traditions. It's vital that Catholics can be secure about just who it is who is piloting the Barque of Peter.

One of the most important roles the Successor of Peter has in the Church is that of being a visible sign of the unity of Christ's followers. Anti-popes represent the exact opposite of this papal ministry. 

The first anti-popes seem to have arisen in the third century, while persecutions still threatened the Church in Rome. The most recent anti-popes (there are a half-dozen or so right now, two of them in the United States) are so marginal that they cannot even be taken seriously. Historical records are incomplete enough (or simply inconclusive enough) for us to even identify all the Popes and anti-popes of history with absolute certainty. 

By some accounts, St. Hippolytus is considered the first anti-pope, but the term really doesn't fit the primitive Church's situtation. Hippolytus is identified as a bishop in or around Rome, but he was a Greek writer, and may have been the “episcopos” (literally “overseer”/bishop) of a Greek-speaking community that was not integrated into the Latin speaking majority of Rome's christians. It's not even the possibility that Hippolytus was an “extra” bishop in Rome that makes him a candidate for anti-pope status: it's that he is known to have had serious differences with more than one of the recognized early Popes. Hippolytus is recognized as a saint in the Catholic Church, thanks to his martyrdom, in exile along with Pontian, Bishop of Rome, with whom he shares a feastday.

Coming right after Hippolytus, Novatian of Rome is a more likely candidate for first-ever anti-pope. When the savage persecution under the Emperor Decius finally subsided, the Church of Rome had been without a bishop for a year. (Pope Fabian had been one of Decius' many victims.) Evidently, the priest Novatian did not agree with the majority of clergy, faithful and bishops who, according to the report by St. Cyprian, elected Cornelius to the Chair of Peter: he sent messengers to summon three bishops to ordain him a bishop as well, and then issued proclamations claiming that he had been chosen to take Fabian's long vacant seat. That this was happening from Rome meant it was not a simply local matter, but affected the whole Church. All the more was this so when Novatian sent missionaries and attempted to replace local bishops with his own appointees: men who would adhere to Novatian's own rigorist views of Church life. 

From Africa, the Council of Carthage undertook an investigation into the case of the two Popes, concluding without a doubt that Novatian's act was completely illegitimate. Within the year, Novatian was formally excommunicated by Pope Cornelius, in a council of some sixty bishops. True to the disruption of Church unity initiated by this first anti-pope, Novatian's followers (“Novatians”) continued on for several centuries.


Later anti-popes, for the most part, followed a different pattern, being associated in one way or other not with a theological or pastoral tendency (Novantian's severity, for instance) but with politics. They were installed with the support of (or under pressure imposed by) an Emperor or king. The tenth and twelfth centuries witnessed the most of this attempted manipulation of the papal office by secular powers.


The longest-lasting and most disruptive succession of anti-popes began in 1378 when a group of cardinals rejected the (admittedly difficult) Pope Urban VI in Rome, declared his election invalid and named their own man, the former Papal Legate known as the “Butcher of Cesena” for his approval of a mass slaughter of villagers in a disputed territory. (Not the most auspicious of beginnings.)

As “Clement VII,” Robert of Geneva established himself in the old papal stronghold of Avignon, France. His successor was a Spaniard who had volunteered for the job under the ruse of then surrendering his claim and reuniting the Church under one legitimate Pope. Needless to say, the anti-pope Benedict XIII found it more congenial to reign in Avignon than to serve in Rome.

Meanwhile in Northern Italy, a council of hundreds (cardinals, bishops, abbots) met to address the problem of the two Popes. The [discredited] Council of Pisa declared the two contenders, Benedict XIII of Avignon, and Gregory XII of Rome, deposed, and led the way for the cardinals to convoke a conclave and elect—that's right—a third “Pope,” who took the name Alexander V. Alexander was not long for this world; his successor was the Anti-pope John XXIII (not to be confused with the 20^th century John, now Blessed John XXIII!). This John (a friend of the powerful Medici family) has the unfortunate distinction of promoting the sale of indulgences, a practice bemoaned in Prague by Jan Hus. In a way the seeds of the Reformation were already sprouting in the fertile terrain of disunity.

With the encouragement of King Sigismund of Germany, John called a Council to end the long schism. Gregory XII in Rome, for his part, authorized the Council, too. Only Benedict XIII in France refused to have anything to do with it. The Council proposed a solution: that all three “Popes” abdicate and allow for a single, valid Pope to be elected. John fled, thinking that the Council proceedings would be invalid without him. Gregory abdicated. Benedict was excommunicated. The new Pope, Martin V, was elected in 1417.

Since the Great Western Schism, no significant anti-popes have arisen with the exception of Felix V, a widower and former hermit who was elected by the Council of Basel when the new Bishop of Rome acted to dissolve the council called by his predecessor. Felix ended well, abdicating his claim and accepting a (real) red hat from his former opponent.





This is the 6th in a series of 7 Things Every Catholic Should Know about the Papacy

#5, The Papacy Might Have Had a Different Form
#4, Infallibility: It's Rare, but It's There 
#3, Bad Popes
#2, The Bishop of Rome is the Pope, not the other way around
#1, It was Jesus' idea

7 Things Every Catholic Should Know about the Papacy (#5)

The Papacy could have taken a different form—and it still can.

The papacy is the world's oldest continuously existing office. But that doesn't mean it always looked the way it does today. The papacy as we know it took almost 2000 years to take this shape, and it can continue to change according to the needs of the Church.

The experience of the first bishops of Rome was hardly what we could call “pontifical.” Waves of persecution, sometimes lackadaisical, sometimes ferocious, ensured that the local bishop kept a fairly low profile in civil society. Besides, the local bishop probably only had a low social profile: Callistus II (+222), for example, had been a slave.

Things changed dramatically when Constantine legalized Christianity—and then started constructing shrines over the tombs of Peter and Paul. The first church buildings began to appear on the sites of the homes that had hosted the community. Many of these churches are known to this day by the names of the homeowners: Cecilia, Chrysogono, Susanna, Praxedes, Pudentiana...) (You can find a list of the churches by family name and current name here: http://romanchurches.wikia.com/wiki/Titulus.) With the Church taking its place in society, leadership styles also evolved. Popes no longer expected martyrdom to end their ministry. Little by little, imperial trappings became associated with the Bishop of Rome. Even the Roman “basilica” (royal) style of architecture was used for Churches.

 Gregory the Great, by Jacopo Vignali
from the Walters Art Museum

At about the same time, though, Imperial Rome moved east, to the newly named “Constantinople” (Constantine's city), the “new Rome.” Old Rome was left more or less to fend for itself, and the Bishop of Rome stepped into the void. Leo the Great is credited with convincing Attila the Hun to spare the decrepit city; a century later, Gregory (also “the Great”), a monk with diplomatic experience, used his organizational skills (he had been Prefect of Rome) for the relief of the needy, setting up an administrative system to streamline assistance. In effect, Gregory restored government to the city. Now he was not just the Bishop of Rome, he was the de facto mayor. Temporal rule was added to the evangelical tasks of "feed My lambs, feed My sheep."

By Gregory's time, the Church also had land holdings (the farms that produced the goods Gregory's system distributed). These farms, supplemented 3 centuries later with a dubious land grant attributed to Constantine, became the nucleus of the later “Papal States.” Its last remnant is Vatican City.

It was Gregory who sent missionaries to England, extending the immediate authority of the Bishop of Rome to the far-off British Isles. Later missionaries from England took the Gospel to the still-pagan parts of northern Europe, seeking authorization (as well as bishops) from Rome, uniting all the Christians of Europe even more clearly in communion with the Pope, and giving the Bishop of Rome more of a direct hand in the life of the churches in those lands.

Quick to notice the benefits offered by a united Christendom, Charlemagne imposed the Papal liturgy on his lands. (Given the slow work of copying such complicated manuscripts, this was not entirely successful!) Centuries later, St Francis of Assisi did something similar, telling his friars (in 1223) that their liturgies should follow the rites of Rome and not of the various locations they found themselves in. Both Charlemagne and Francis grasped the unifying quality of the Pope's role. So the papal liturgies had, at least on paper, pride of place even in lands with their own ancient rites. Not until the Council of Trent would the liturgical rites of Rome be mandated throughout the Latin Church, unless a locale could prove that its own rites were over 200 years old. (Conveniently, by the time of Trent the printing press assured ample copies could be made available.) 

Naturally, commercial interests also sought to work this unifying power to their own advantage. With the election of the Bishop of Rome in the hands of the priests and people of the city, influential families (with connections throughout Europe) sought to bend the outcome. Even legislation limiting votes to “Cardinal-Bishops” did not free the papacy from being manipulated and even controlled by the powerful, whether kings or clans (see “Bad Popes”). Like it or not, the Pope was now a prince in his own right. He even started having a coronation--with a unique triple tiara style headdress that continued to be used for about 800 years—until Pope Paul VI retired his immediately after the ceremony.

With the series of revolutions in Europe (beginning with France) that ushered in the modern political framework came the overturning of the former relations between secular and religious authority. Where before a ruler might have submitted nominations for bishop, now that was either outlawed by the nation, or simply unthinkable (a Freethinker—relativist—might be nominated!). The Pope began directly appointing more and more bishops.

It was the loss of the Papal States in 1870 (with the birth of the modern nation of Italy)—along with the birth of popular media—that, oddly enough, contributed greatly to the high profile model of papacy we are familiar with today. Early on, Blessed Pope Pius IX protested by declaring himself a “prisoner of the Vatican.” (He had actually lost his residence, the Quirinale, to the new Italian nation.) But there were advantages to being limited to the tiny territory of Vatican City. The pope was now free to focus on his pastoral ministry without being entrenched in local politics.

Commemorative coins issued by the Vatican on the occasion
of Pope Paul's speech before the U.N. General Assembly.

Pope Leo XIII realized that he could address “the Condition of the Working Classes” with the first-ever social encyclical. Pius X reversed his predecessors' course and gave Italian Catholics permission to participate in elections. John XXIII decided to be “prisoner of the Vatican” no more and ventured out to Rome's hospitals and parishes and prisons. And without any input whatsoever, he called a Council when it wasn't all that apparent to most minds in Rome that one was called for. Paul VI became the first “world” Pope, traveling not only out of Italy, but crossing oceans to speak to the United Nations, visiting the Holy Land, India and even Western Samoa (where he met one of the talking chiefs: my local superior's dad!). The papacy had developed in more ways than could have been imagined in the 2^nd or 8^th century.

And it can continue to develop. Pope John Paul II's encyclical on Christian unity asked for input on how the papal ministry could evolve to better serve the needs of the whole Christian community. Pope Benedict XVI published books as a private theologian under his given name and is resigning the papal office itself—under no exterior pressure at all.

We haven't seen the end of the development of the papacy.  

This is the 5th in a series of 7 Things Every Catholic Should Know about the Papacy

#4, Infallibility: It's Rare, but It's There 
#3, Bad Popes
#2, The Bishop of Rome is the Pope, not the other way around
#1, It was Jesus' idea

7 Things Every Catholic Should Know about the Papacy (#3)

Alexander VI, Poster Child of Bad Popes

Bad popes, good popes, mediocre popes: we've seen them all. And kind of shrugged off most of them as just not that interesting. But the fascination continues with the more notorious occupants of the Chair of Peter. That TV series on the Borgias didn't help, given that one of their own is generally acknowledged as the worst of the bunch.

Popes are men of their times... and the bad popes tell us something about the Church's ever-changing relationship to society. In the early middle ages, influential Roman families controlled the election of the Pope (unless a northern king from, say, Germany, came down and put his own candidate on Peter's Chair). Meanwhile the Vikings were devastating the monasteries that could have been training grounds for scholarly and virtuous bishops (and, possibly, popes). The lack of leadership from within opened the way to exploitation by the powerful, and this continued off and on through the Renaissance. (A series of popes, including the most notorious, came from just two Italian families, the Medici and the Borgia.) The Church became a career path like any other; the Pope a “prince” like any other with lands to defend and commerce to be conducted. Yet despite the financial and moral corruption of some of the successors of St. Peter, none of them ever promulgated false teachings or attempted to rewrite the moral laws they themselves flouted in their personal lives! 

In one of the most challenging eras in Church history, with European leaders in ever-changing alliances and wars (and body counts to match), with Martin Luther's righteous challenges as yet unanswered, two of the less admirable popes succeeded one another. Clement VII (a Medici) was more interested in continental politics than in the city of Rome, which was sacked on his watch. His successor was Paul III, born Alexander Farnese. Through his sister, Farnese had ties to the most infamous of Renaissance popes, the Borgia Alexander VI (the married Julia was the pope's mistress). Farnese himself was a family man who appointed two teenaged grandsons as Cardinals (he had separated from his own mistress, the mother of his four children, before he was ordained to the priesthood--and, to be fair, was not a wicked man).

The young St. Ignatius Loyola
discovering the call of Christ.

Any other institution would have been completely run to the ground, but the Holy Spirit not only has protected the Church from error and from the depredations of her own unworthy leaders, God has been continually raising up SAINTS, the real powerhouses in the Church, to point out the path of the Gospel: “Do not conform to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind!” (Rom. 12:4).

During this same period, some of the greatest saints in history made their mark: Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila, Ignatius of Loyola, Peter Favre, Philip Neri, John of the Cross, Cajetan, Thomas More, John Fisher, Peter of Alcantera, Francis Borgia (great-grandson of Pope Alexander). Could it be that the weaker and more worldly the Pope, the greater the saints of the age?

Most of the 8-10 generally recognized "bad popes" reigned between 880-1550. As Protestantism made the pope irrelevant to swaths of northern Europe and nation-states began to arise, the climate that had allowed for bad popes gradually changed. We haven't seen their like since.

When a pope is saintly, it could be believed that he – and he alone – is responsible for the spread of the Gospel. But no one can be tempted to shift all the responsibility for the cause of the Gospel on men who are obviously unfaithful to it! Then it becomes clear that the work of evangelization truly rests on the shoulders of each and every member of the Church. (Could the bad popes have been somehow good for the Church, after all?)

This is the third in a series of 7 Things Every Catholic Should Know about the Papacy.
#2 is The Bishop of Rome is the Pope, Not Vice-Versa
#1 is It Was Jesus' Idea to Build His Church on Peter

7 Things Every Catholic Should Know about the Papacy (#2)

#2:

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.

7 Things Every Catholic Should Know about the Papacy (#1)

1. It was Jesus' idea to give his Church structural unity by “building” it on a rock, like a wise man (Mt. 7:24). That “rock” was the former fisherman, Simon, the son of John.

Peter with his keys and his upside-down cross,
from Montserrat, Spain.

Jesus prepared Simon for this role through experiences, teachings (Mt. 17:25), prayers (Lk. 22: 32) and even rebukes (Mt. 16:23) that were unique among the apostles. Then, in a solemn way, he made it explicit by conferring on him a new name, the way God had changed Abram's name to Abraham, and Jacob's name to Israel. But “Peter” was a completely made-up name, invented by Jesus. “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Mt 16: 18). Of course, Jesus called him Kephas (Aramaic for “foundation stone” or “rock”) and not the Greek-style “Peter,” but Simon was known by both for the rest of his life. (We see Paul refer to him in both ways—Kephas and Peter—within a few verses in the letter to the Galatians, chapter 2.)

The Gospel of Matthew goes into detail on what this name change meant, quoting the prophet Isaiah to demonstrate the kind of authority Jesus was giving Peter. Like the new “master of the palace,” Peter was given the Master's own set of keys, to open and close, bind and loose. Later (Mt. 18:8) the Apostles would be given that power to bind and loose, but only Peter ever held the keys himself. Peter is consistently singled out among the Twelve. When Jesus offers a challenging teaching, it is Peter who responds for the rest (Mk. 10:28). Even when predicting Simon's betrayals, Jesus affirms his special calling to “strengthen your brothers” (see Lk. 22:32).

On Easter morning, the Angel at the tomb told Mary Magdalen and the other women, “Go tell the disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee' “ (Mk. 16:7) She ran “to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved” (Jn. 20:1). And even though the younger disciple outran Peter, it was Peter who first stepped into the empty tomb while the other waited outside. At the Sea of Galilee, the Risen Jesus put the care of his sheep and lambs into Peter's hands: “Do you love me? Feed my lambs” (see Jn. 21:15-19).

The primitive Church expressed Peter's special role in various ways. In every list of the names of the Apostles (in the Gospels and in Acts), Peter's name comes first. When the question of what to do about Gentiles seeking Baptism caused great controversy in the Jerusalem community, threatening its peace and unity, it was Peter whose declaration caused the assembly to fall silent (Acts 15: 7-11).

Even Paul had to explain, in detail, a confrontation he had had with Peter in Antioch. Although Paul took issue with Peter's behavior (not his teaching), that episode damaged not Peter's credibility, but Paul's.

Ultimately, the papacy comes from Jesus himself, through Peter.