Twenty-one centuries. We’ve had a lot of popes in that time. Some of them have been wonderful. Others have been a scandal and a shame, a blot of Christianity and the Church. Catholic history is human history woven around a pillar of divine teaching. It is as fallible as fallen humanity. What holds it together is not the perfection of the popes. It is bound together by the Holy Spirit that lets each of us fall, and then pick ourselves back up again.
Life in Christ is mostly a matter of falling and getting back up. The history of the popes reflects that. Here is a run down of all the popes we’ve had, beginning with Peter.
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