The Pope: What the Office Actually Is and Is Not

When people learn that the Catholic Church has a single leader who speaks with authority for the whole Church, they tend to have one of two reactions.

Either it strikes them as remarkable — one man, a billion people, a single office. Or it strikes them as troubling for the same reason.

Both reactions are understandable.

The office has a name: the papacy. The man who holds it is the Bishop of Rome — the successor of the apostle Peter, the man Jesus appointed to lead the early Church. In ordinary conversation, we call him the pope, from the Latin papa — father. He is elected by the College of Cardinals, the senior bishops of the Church from around the world, when the previous pope dies or resigns. He leads the Church until death or resignation.

The Catholic Church traces this office to a moment in Matthew's Gospel, when Jesus turns to Simon — a fisherman, an unlikely candidate for anything — and says: "You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church" (Mt 16:18, NABRE). The key point is the name change. Simon becomes Peter, which in Greek is Petros — rock. The Church has always understood this not as a compliment to a man but as the founding of an office — and the beginning of what the tradition calls apostolic succession: the unbroken line of authority from Peter through every Bishop of Rome to the present day.

Here is what makes that founding so striking. Peter was not the obvious choice. He was impulsive, prone to misunderstanding, and on the night Jesus needed him most — the night of the arrest, the trial, and the hours before the crucifixion — Peter denied knowing him. Three times. The first time, to a servant girl. Then to others in the same courtyard. Over the course of a single night.

And Jesus gave him the keys anyway.

Not after Peter had cleaned himself up. Not after he had proven himself worthy. The risen Jesus appeared to Peter, asked him three times, "Do you love me?" — once for each denial — and three times commissioned him: "Feed my sheep" (Jn 21:15-17). The restoration was as deliberate as the failure.

Think about what that cost him. The fire in the courtyard. The servant girl's face. The third denial still on his lips when the rooster crowed. And then the Spirit came. And Peter stood up. And opened his mouth. That is not a small thing. That is a man walking back into the room he had run out of.

What happened next is told in the Acts of the Apostles. Peter stood up at Pentecost and preached to the crowd — and three thousand people were baptized that day (Acts 2:41). He healed a man lame from birth at the temple gate, looked at him, and said simply: "In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, rise and walk" (Acts 3:6). He stood before the Sanhedrin — the same council that had condemned Jesus — and refused to be silenced (Acts 4:19-20). He was the first to baptize a Gentile, crossing a boundary that changed the direction of the Church forever (Acts 10).

The same man. The one who denied knowing Jesus three times in a single night. The one who ran.

That pattern has repeated itself across twenty centuries. There have been brilliant popes and corrupt ones, popes who reformed the Church and popes who embarrassed it, popes canonized as saints and popes put on trial. The Catholic tradition does not ask its members to pretend otherwise. It asks them to distinguish between the man and the office.

Pope John XXIII — one of the twentieth century's most beloved popes, the man who called the Second Vatican Council — used to tell this story about himself: "It often happens that I wake up at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the Pope."

That is a man who understood the weight of what he carried — and who had not lost his sense of proportion.

Pope Francis understood the same thing differently. On the night of his election, March 13, 2013, he stepped onto the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica for the first time as pope — head of a billion-person institution, the most-watched man in the world at that moment — and said simply: "Brothers and sisters, good evening." Then, before blessing the crowd, he asked them to pray for him first.

A man who had just been given the keys asked for prayers before he offered his blessing.

Two different men. Two different centuries. The same chair. The same weight. The same impossibility of being fully equal to what the office demands — and the same willingness to try.

It is not a guarantee of personal holiness. It is not a claim that every word the pope speaks carries divine authority. It is not a monarchy of personality, though individual popes have had enormous personalities.

It is an office with a claim — that Peter's role in the early Church did not die with Peter, that someone has held it since, and that the Church still needs it.

The Catholic Church has made that claim since the beginning. Peter denied Jesus and then preached to thousands. The office outlasted the worst moment of the man who first held it. That is the story the Church tells — and has told, without interruption, for two thousand years.

Let us pray. Lord, you built your Church on the word of a fisherman who failed you, yet you forgave him. Keep your Church from placing too much trust in any human vessel and too little in the office you established to carry the faith through time. Give your servant the pope wisdom, humility, and the courage to speak when it is required. Amen.

Next Tuesday: The Church keeps a calendar of heroes — people who lived the faith so fully that the Church officially declared them and gave them a feast day. What a saint is, and why the Church needs them.

Next Friday: For the Life of the World — The Most Holy Trinity, May 31.

For Further Reading

A note on sources — Scripture quotations use the New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE), the translation used at Mass in the United States. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) is available free at vatican.va. Church documents cited are also available at vatican.va.

Scripture — The founding of Peter's role is in Matthew 16:13-20. Read the full passage for context — Jesus asks who people say he is, Peter answers, the commission follows. John 21:15-17 is the restoration scene — the risen Jesus asking Peter three times "Do you love me?" Read them together. The symmetry is deliberate. The Acts of the Apostles shows Peter in action — chapters 2, 3, 4, and 10 are the key ones. He is a different man after the Resurrection. Worth seeing for yourself.

Catechism — On the papacy and Peter's role, see CCC 880-887. On what the pope can and cannot teach with authority, see CCC 888-892. For the historically curious: the two occasions on which popes have spoken with formal binding authority on a matter of faith were the definition of the Immaculate Conception by Pope Pius IX in 1854 (the belief that Mary was preserved from original sin from the moment of her conception) and the definition of the Assumption by Pope Pius XII in 1950 (the belief that Mary was taken body and soul into heaven at the end of her earthly life). Two definitions. Ninety-six years apart. In two thousand years of history.

Church Documents — Lumen Gentium (Second Vatican Council, 1964), Chapter III, is the fullest modern statement of what the Church teaches about the papacy and its relationship to the college of bishops. It is more collegial and less monarchical than most people expect.

Points to Ponder

For Group Discussion

Peter denied Jesus three times, ran, and then — after being restored — preached at Pentecost, healed the sick, stood before the Sanhedrin without flinching, and crossed a boundary no one else had crossed by baptizing the first Gentile. What would it look like for your community to operate with that same conviction — that the worst moment is not the final word, and that failure does not disqualify a person from being trusted again with something important?

John XXIII woke up at night worried about problems he then remembered were his to solve. Francis asked for prayers before he blessed the crowd. Both men understood the gap between the office and the person holding it. Where does your community struggle most to hold that distinction — between the institution and the human beings who represent it? What would it cost to hold it more honestly?

For Individual Discernment

The risen Jesus did not ask Peter whether he had earned another chance. He asked: "Do you love me?" Think of one place in your own life — a failure, a running away, a denial — where you have been waiting to be good enough before you allowed yourself to be trusted again. What would it mean to hear that question asked of you directly, right now, before you have fixed anything?

Peter's story did not end with the denial. It ended with his life poured out for what he believed. What is one step you could take this week — not when you are ready, not after you have cleaned yourself up — but now, as you are, toward the thing you have been putting off because you do not feel worthy of it?

Glossary

Pope (POPE) — From the Latin papa, meaning father. The Bishop of Rome, head of the Catholic Church, and successor of the apostle Peter (CCC 882).

Papacy (PAY-puh-see) — The office of the pope. The institution, not the individual. The man changes; the office continues (CCC 880).

College of Cardinals — The senior bishops of the Church from around the world who elect a new pope when the previous one dies or resigns. Cardinals are appointed by the pope (CCC 887).

Apostolic Succession (app-os-TOL-ik) — The unbroken line of authority from the apostles through every bishop to the present day. The Church understands the pope as the successor of Peter in this line (CCC 861-862).

Infallibility (in-fal-ih-BIL-ih-tee) — The teaching that when the pope speaks formally and deliberately on a matter of faith or morals, intending to bind the whole Church, he does so without error. This applies in a narrow and specific set of conditions — not to everything the pope says or writes (CCC 891).