Papal supremacy

Inscription at front of Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, cathedral church of the Bishop of Rome: Sacros(ancta) Lateran(ensis) eccles(ia) omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput meaning "Most Holy Lateran Church, of all the churches in the city and the world, the Mother and Head"

In the Roman Catholic Church, the pope is seen as the highest clergy and as the head of the church. In short, anything the pope says in his function of head of the church is valid for the whole church. The pope has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered: that, in brief, "the Pope enjoys, by divine institution, supreme, full, immediate, and universal power in the care of souls." This means that the situation of the pope is similar to that of an absolute monarch or the leader of a Fascist state.

Examples of papal supremacy

• Urban II's launching in 1095 of the Crusades, which, in an attempt to recover the Holy Land and territories of the Byzantine Empire which had been conquered by Muslim Seljuk Turks, marshalled European nobility under papal leadership.
• The Papacy determined whom they wished to be the king of various lands by the crowning by Pope Leo III of Charlemagne, first of the Carolingian emperors, rather than a man proclaiming himself king.

Papal Supremacy Media

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  Pius IX opening the First Vatican Council, illustration. It is during this council that papal supremacy was proclaimed a dogma.