# The Catholic Church as a world power The Church as a rival power through history: the papacy and the empires, the crusades and inquisitions, the Reformation split, the Counter-Reformation, the loss and defense of temporal power, and the modern global Church. *This story parallel: The story of Judaism* *This story parallel: 1492: expulsion, conversos, and the New World* *This story part of: Religion and ideology* *The pillars of modern power part of this story* *Missions and lodges: two networks of empire parallel this story* *1492: expulsion, conversos, and the New World parallel this story* *The history of science parallel this story* *Jews, moneylending, and the story of banking parallel this story* *The Sephardic Jews: golden age and exile parallel this story* *South America: from the Inca to independence parallel this story* *The Byzantine Empire: Rome in the east parallel this story* *The Holy Roman Empire: neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire part of this story* *Ireland: from the island of saints to the Republic parallel this story* *The faiths that fought empire: African religion and resistance parallel this story* *The Rotary Club: service, fraternity, and suspicion parallel this story* *Uhuru Kenyatta: dynasty, Jubilee, debt, and the handshake state parallel this story* *Religion and ideology part of this story* ## c. 420 — The deicide charge and Augustine's doctrine of the Jewish witness Early Church writers accused the Jewish people as a whole of killing Christ, a charge known as deicide that fed centuries of hostility. Augustine of Hippo argued that Jews should not be killed but preserved in a subjected state as living witnesses to the truth of Christian scripture, citing the psalm verse slay them not. His witness doctrine both justified their subjugation and, in principle, restrained outright massacre. ## c. 452 — Leo the Great turns back Attila Pope Leo I met Attila the Hun near Mantua and, by tradition, persuaded him to withdraw from Italy. The episode became a symbol of the bishop of Rome acting where the Western emperors could not. ## 494 — Gelasius I and the doctrine of two powers In a letter to Emperor Anastasius I, Pope Gelasius I argued that the world is ruled by two powers, the sacred authority of priests and the royal power of kings. The text became a foundation for later claims of Church independence from the state. ## 590 to 604 — Gregory the Great and the papal state Pope Gregory I governed Rome and its lands as a de facto ruler, organizing defense, food supply and diplomacy as imperial authority faded in Italy. His pontificate expanded the practical and political reach of the papacy. ## 756 — Pepin's Donation creates the Papal States The Frankish king Pepin the Short defeated the Lombards and granted conquered lands in central Italy to the pope. This Donation of Pepin created the Papal States, a territory the popes would rule for over a thousand years. ## 25 December 800 — Pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne emperor On Christmas Day, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor in Saint Peter's Basilica. The act asserted that imperial authority in the West could be conferred by the pope, tying the papacy to the making of emperors. ## c. 800 — The Donation of Constantine forgery The Donation of Constantine was a document, later proven to be a forgery, that claimed Emperor Constantine had granted the popes authority over Rome and the Western Empire. It was produced around the eighth century and used for centuries to support papal claims to temporal power. ## 16 July 1054 — The East-West Schism of 1054 Papal legates and the Patriarch of Constantinople exchanged excommunications over disputes about papal authority and doctrine. The break split Christianity into the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, a division that has never healed. ## 1075 — Dictatus Papae asserts papal supremacy Pope Gregory VII issued a set of 27 statements claiming that the pope alone could depose emperors, that his judgment could not be overruled, and that the Roman Church had never erred. The document set out an assertive vision of papal power over secular rulers. ## 1076 to 1122 — The Investiture Controversy begins Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV clashed over who could appoint bishops, a dispute known as the Investiture Controversy. Gregory excommunicated Henry, opening a long struggle between papal and imperial authority. ## 25 January 1077 — Road to Canossa Emperor Henry IV traveled to Canossa and waited three days in the snow before Pope Gregory VII lifted his excommunication on 28 January. The scene became a lasting image of a monarch submitting to the pope. ## 27 November 1095 — Council of Clermont launches the First Crusade Pope Urban II called on Western knights to march east and recover Jerusalem, promising spiritual rewards to those who went. The appeal launched the Crusades and showed the papacy directing armies across the continent. ## 15 July 1099 — Crusaders capture Jerusalem After a long siege, the armies of the First Crusade stormed Jerusalem and killed much of its Muslim and Jewish population. The massacre, carried out in the name of the faith the pope had called them to defend, became a lasting symbol of holy war. ## c. 1120 — Sicut Judaeis protects Jews from forced baptism Around 1120 Pope Calixtus II issued the bull Sicut Judaeis, which forbade Christians to baptize Jews by force, harm them, seize their property, or disturb their festivals and cemeteries. More than twenty popes reissued it over the following centuries, making it the papacy's standing protective charter for Jews. The same popes still upheld the laws that kept Jews in a subordinate legal position. ## 23 September 1122 — Concordat of Worms ends the Investiture Controversy The pope and the Holy Roman Emperor reached a compromise on the appointment of bishops, ending the Investiture Controversy. The Church gained the right to invest bishops with spiritual authority while the emperor kept a role in granting their lands. ## 1179 to 1215 — The Lateran Councils impose the Jewish badge and segregation The Third Lateran Council of 1179 and the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, both summoned by the papacy, tightened restrictions on Jewish life across Western Christendom. The Fourth Lateran under Innocent III required Jews and Muslims to wear distinguishing dress or a badge, barred them from public office, and ordered them to stay indoors during Holy Week. These canons spread the marking and segregation of Jews through Europe. ## 1184 — Ad abolendam begins the medieval Inquisition Pope Lucius III ordered bishops to seek out and punish heretics, an early step toward organized Church courts against dissent. It laid groundwork for the later inquisitions. ## 1198 to 1216 — Innocent III and the height of papal power Pope Innocent III treated kings as vassals of the Holy See, placed England and other realms under interdict, and intervened across European politics. His pontificate is often seen as the peak of medieval papal authority. ## 13 April 1204 — The Fourth Crusade sacks Constantinople A crusade meant for the Holy Land was diverted and turned on the Christian city of Constantinople, which the crusaders looted and burned. Pope Innocent III had forbidden the attack and condemned it, but the assault crippled the Byzantine Empire and deepened the split between Rome and the Eastern Church. ## 1209 to 1229 — The Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars Pope Innocent III called a crusade against the Cathars, a dissenting Christian sect in the south of France. Tens of thousands were killed over twenty years, and the massacre at Beziers, where a papal legate is reported to have said to kill all and let God sort them out, became infamous. The war destroyed Cathar society and extended the Inquisition to root out survivors. ## November 1215 — Fourth Lateran Council Called by Innocent III, the council defined Catholic doctrine, required annual confession, and issued rules that included marks and restrictions on Jews and Muslims. It showed the papacy legislating for all of Western Christendom. > "In 1215 he called a council to his Lateran Palace which represented a gathering of bishops unprecedented in number in the Western Church" > — A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, p. 429-432 ## 1231 — The papal Inquisition is established Pope Gregory IX created a standing office to investigate heresy and appointed inquisitors, often drawn from the Dominican order. It marked the papacy building a permanent machinery to police belief. ## 1240 — The Talmud burned after the Paris disputation In 1240 a convert's denunciation, taken up by Pope Gregory IX, led to a public trial of the Talmud in Paris. The book was condemned, and in 1242 wagonloads of confiscated Jewish manuscripts, said to number in the thousands, were burned in the city. Later popes ordered further seizures and censorship of Hebrew texts. ## 15 May 1252 — Ad extirpanda authorizes torture Pope Innocent IV issued a bull permitting inquisitors to use torture to extract confessions from suspected heretics. It gave formal Church sanction to a practice that shaped inquisitorial trials for centuries. ## c. 1278 — The friars and the forced conversion sermons From the thirteenth century Dominican and Franciscan friars led campaigns to convert Jews, staffing the Inquisition and staging public disputations. Pope Nicholas III's bull Vineam Sorec of 1278 ordered friars to preach to Jews, and Jews were increasingly compelled to attend such sermons. Pope Gregory XIII later made attendance at weekly conversion sermons compulsory in Rome in 1584. ## 18 November 1302 — Unam Sanctam declares papal supremacy Pope Boniface VIII issued the bull Unam Sanctam, declaring that submission to the Roman pontiff was necessary for salvation. It was one of the strongest claims of papal authority over secular rulers, made during his conflict with the king of France. ## 1309 to 1377 — The papacy moves to Avignon For nearly seventy years the popes resided in Avignon under strong French influence rather than in Rome. Critics called it the Babylonian Captivity of the Church and saw it as a sign of the papacy's subjection to a rising monarchy. ## 1378 to 1417 — Western Schism splits the papacy Rival popes in Rome and Avignon, and later a third claimant, each claimed to be the true head of the Church. The split divided Europe along political lines and damaged papal prestige for decades. ## 1391 — Vincent Ferrer and the 1391 massacres in Spain In 1391 a wave of massacres swept Jewish communities across Castile and Aragon, beginning in Seville, killing thousands and forcing many survivors to accept baptism. The Dominican preacher Vincent Ferrer, later canonized as a saint, toured the peninsula urging Jews to convert and is widely blamed for inflaming the violence, though he insisted he sought conversion rather than killing. The pogroms created a large population of conversos. ## 1414 to 1418 — Council of Constance ends the Western Schism The council deposed the rival claimants and elected Martin V in 1417, restoring a single pope. It also condemned the reformer Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake, and debated the authority of councils over popes. ## 1440 — Lorenzo Valla exposes the Donation of Constantine The humanist scholar Lorenzo Valla used linguistic analysis to prove that the Donation of Constantine was a medieval forgery. His work undercut a long standing legal basis for papal claims to temporal rule. ## c. 1449 — The purity of blood statutes Riots in Toledo in 1449 produced the first limpieza de sangre, or purity of blood, statutes, which barred people of Jewish ancestry, even baptized Christians, from offices, guilds and religious orders. The obsession with tainted blood spread through Spanish institutions and much of the Church despite early papal objections. The statutes shaped Spanish life and endured formally into the nineteenth century. ## 18 June 1452 — Dum Diversas authorizes enslavement Pope Nicholas V granted the king of Portugal the right to conquer non-Christian peoples and reduce them to perpetual slavery. The bull is counted among the texts later linked to the Doctrine of Discovery. ## 8 January 1455 — Romanus Pontifex sanctions colonial conquest Pope Nicholas V confirmed Portugal's claim to lands and trade along the African coast and the enslavement of their peoples. It gave Church backing to early European colonial expansion. ## 1 November 1478 — Spanish Inquisition established Pope Sixtus IV authorized the Catholic Monarchs to appoint inquisitors in Castile. The Spanish Inquisition became a powerful instrument of the crown and Church, targeting converts suspected of secret Judaism or Islam and lasting into the nineteenth century. ## c. 1480 to c. 1834 — The autos-da-fe and the toll of the Spanish Inquisition For over three centuries the Spanish Inquisition tried tens of thousands, staging public autos-da-fe where the condemned were paraded and some burned. Modern historians estimate that it executed roughly three to five thousand people over its whole history, far fewer than the tens of thousands of popular legend, but its use of torture, secret denunciations and mass expulsions spread real and lasting terror. ## 1483 — Torquemada drives the Spanish Inquisition and expulsion The Dominican friar Tomas de Torquemada, confessor to Queen Isabella, was named Grand Inquisitor in 1483 and shaped the early Spanish Inquisition's pursuit of conversos suspected of secretly keeping Judaism. He is widely credited with pressing Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic Monarchs, toward the 1492 decree expelling the Jews, arguing that unconverted Jews corrupted the converts. His name became a byword for inquisitorial zeal. ## 31 March 1492 — Expulsion of the Jews from Spain Ferdinand and Isabella issue the Alhambra Decree ordering Jews to convert or leave Spain within months. The expulsion ends centuries of Iberian Jewish life and scatters Sephardic communities across the Mediterranean world. ## 4 May 1493 — Inter Caetera divides the New World Pope Alexander VI drew a line dividing newly reached lands between Spain and Portugal and granted them rights to convert and rule the peoples there. The bull is a central document of the Doctrine of Discovery. ## 16 June 1494 — Treaty of Tordesillas treaty dividing territory between Portugal and Spain ## c. 1500 — The Papal States as a temporal monarchy By the Renaissance the popes ruled a large state across central Italy, raising taxes, minting coins and waging war like other princes. Popes such as Julius II personally led armies in the field, and the government of these lands consumed much of the papacy's energy until Italian unification. ## 1513 — The Requerimiento and the conquest of the Americas Spanish conquerors read out a document ordering indigenous peoples to accept Christian and Spanish rule or face war and enslavement. It tied the Church's mission to the violent conquest of the Americas. ## c. 1516 — The sale of indulgences The Church sold indulgences, documents said to reduce punishment for sin, to raise money for projects such as the rebuilding of Saint Peter's Basilica. The preacher Johann Tetzel's aggressive selling in Germany provoked Martin Luther's protest and helped trigger the Reformation. ## 1517 — The Protestant Reformation splits Western Christianity Martin Luther's protest against Church practices grew into a movement that broke the religious unity of Western Europe. The Reformation ended the papacy's monopoly over Western Christendom and set off more than a century of conflict. ## 25 May 1521 — Diet of Worms condemns Luther Summoned before the emperor and the imperial diet, Martin Luther refused to recant. The Edict of Worms declared him an outlaw and a heretic, hardening the break between Rome and the reformers. ## November 1534 — The Act of Supremacy breaks England from Rome Parliament declared King Henry VIII the supreme head of the Church of England, cutting ties with the pope. England's break with Rome removed a major kingdom from Catholic authority. ## 27 September 1540 — Society of Jesus founded Pope Paul III approved the Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius of Loyola. The Jesuits became a disciplined order pledged to the pope, active in education, missions and the Counter-Reformation across the globe. ## 21 July 1542 — Roman Inquisition established Pope Paul III set up the Congregation of the Holy Office to defend Catholic doctrine against Protestantism. The Roman Inquisition tried cases across Italy and later judged figures such as Galileo Galilei. ## 13 December 1545 to 1563 — Council of Trent opens the Counter-Reformation The council met over eighteen years to define Catholic doctrine against Protestantism and to reform Church discipline. It shaped the Counter-Reformation and set the direction of the Catholic Church for four centuries. ## c. 1549 — Jesuit missions in Asia and the Americas Jesuit missionaries such as Francis Xavier and Matteo Ricci carried Catholicism to Japan, China, India and the Americas. The missions spread the faith while often serving the interests of colonial powers. ## 1550 to 1551 — The Valladolid debate on indigenous rights Bartolome de las Casas and Juan Gines de Sepulveda argued before a Spanish council over whether indigenous Americans had rights and souls or could be conquered by force. The debate exposed a deep split within the Church over colonial rule. ## 14 July 1555 to 1870 — Cum nimis absurdum creates the Roman Ghetto On 14 July 1555 Pope Paul IV issued the bull Cum nimis absurdum, which stripped the Jews of Rome of most rights, forced them to wear a yellow hat or veil, barred them from most trades, and shut them into a single walled quarter that became the Roman Ghetto. The ghetto system it created lasted under papal rule until Italian troops took Rome in 1870. It stood as the papacy's harshest institutional treatment of Jews. ## 25 September 1555 — Peace of Augsburg Settlement within the Holy Roman Empire allowing each prince to choose Lutheranism or Catholicism for his territory, summarized as cuius regio, eius religio. It ended open religious war in Germany for over sixty years. ## 1559 to 1966 — Index of Forbidden Books Pope Paul IV issued the first Roman Index of Forbidden Books, a list of publications Catholics were banned from reading. The Church maintained and updated the Index for four centuries before abolishing it in 1966. ## 1560 to 1812 — Goa Inquisition The Inquisition was extended to Portuguese India, where it prosecuted converts and non-Christians for religious offenses. It showed the Church's disciplinary reach following European empire into Asia. ## 1562 to April 1598 — French Wars of Religion Catholics and Huguenots fight eight civil wars punctuated by massacres, including St. Bartholomew's Day in 1572. The Edict of Nantes finally grants Protestants limited toleration. ## 25 February 1570 — Regnans in Excelsis excommunicates Elizabeth I Pope Pius V declared Queen Elizabeth I a heretic and released her subjects from allegiance. The bull deepened the split with England and made English Catholics suspect as potential traitors. ## 24 August 1572 — Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre A wave of killings targeting French Protestants began in Paris and spread across France, leaving thousands dead. The massacre was a turning point in the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Huguenots. ## 13 April 1598 — Edict of Nantes King Henry IV granted French Protestants limited toleration and civil rights, ending the Wars of Religion. It was a rare official acceptance of two faiths within a Catholic kingdom. ## 1618 to 1648 — The Thirty Years War A war that began over religion in the Holy Roman Empire drew in most of Europe's powers and devastated German lands. It became as much a struggle for political dominance as a Catholic and Protestant conflict. ## 22 June 1633 — The Galileo affair The Roman Inquisition tried the astronomer Galileo Galilei for teaching that the Earth moves around the Sun, forced him to recant and placed him under house arrest for the rest of his life. The case became a lasting emblem of conflict between Church authority and science, and in 1992 Pope John Paul II acknowledged that the Church had erred. ## 24 October 1648 — Peace of Westphalia Twin treaties ending the Thirty Years' War in the Holy Roman Empire and the Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Dutch Republic. They are widely seen as the foundation of the modern system of sovereign states. ## 18 October 1685 — Revocation of the Edict of Nantes King Louis XIV revoked the tolerance granted to French Protestants, driving many into exile. The move showed a Catholic monarch enforcing religious uniformity by force. ## 21 July 1773 — Suppression of the Jesuits Under pressure from Catholic monarchs who feared Jesuit power, Pope Clement XIV dissolved the Society of Jesus. The suppression removed the Church's most influential order for over forty years. ## 7 August 1814 — Restoration of the Jesuits Pope Pius VII restored the Society of Jesus worldwide after the fall of Napoleon. The order returned to its work in education and missions as the Church regrouped in a changed Europe. ## 8 December 1864 — Syllabus of Errors Pope Pius IX issued a list condemning ideas such as liberalism, separation of church and state, and religious freedom. It set the Church against much of modern liberal politics. ## 18 July 1870 — First Vatican Council defines papal infallibility The council adopted the constitution Pastor Aeternus, defining that the pope teaches without error when he speaks on matters of faith and morals from his office. The doctrine centralized authority in the papacy just as its temporal power collapsed. ## 20 September 1870 — Capture of Rome ends the Papal States Italian troops took Rome and completed the unification of Italy, ending more than a thousand years of papal rule over central Italy. The pope declared himself a prisoner in the Vatican and refused to recognize the new Italian state. ## c. 1883 to c. 1996 — Canada's Indian residential schools For more than a century the Canadian government funded a system of residential schools, most of them run by the Catholic Church, that removed roughly 150,000 Indigenous children from their families to strip them of their languages and cultures. Many suffered abuse and neglect, and thousands died. A 2015 truth commission called the system a cultural genocide. ## 15 May 1891 — Rerum Novarum and Catholic social teaching Pope Leo XIII addressed the conditions of workers, defending private property while calling for fair wages and the right to form unions. The encyclical launched modern Catholic social teaching and offered a Church answer to socialism and unchecked capitalism. ## c. 1922 to c. 1996 — The Magdalene laundries in Ireland Catholic religious orders in Ireland ran laundries where women and girls, many sent for being unmarried mothers or simply seen as troublesome, were confined and made to work without pay. The last one closed in 1996, and a 2013 state inquiry led the Irish government to issue a formal apology for the abuse and the state's role in it. ## 11 February 1929 — Lateran Treaty creates Vatican City Italy and the Holy See settled the Roman Question by creating the independent state of Vatican City. The treaty ended nearly sixty years of dispute and restored the pope as a sovereign, though over a tiny territory. ## 20 July 1933 — Reichskonkordat with Nazi Germany The Holy See signed a concordat with Adolf Hitler's government, protecting Church rights in Germany in exchange for Catholic withdrawal from politics. The agreement remains debated for lending the new Nazi regime early legitimacy. ## 14 March 1937 — Mit brennender Sorge condemns Nazism Pope Pius XI issued an encyclical, read from German pulpits, that attacked the racism and idolatry of the Nazi state. It was a rare open Church criticism of the regime. ## 1939 to 1945 — Pius XII and the Church during the Second World War Pope Pius XII led the Church through the war and the Holocaust, avoiding open condemnation of Nazi genocide while the Vatican sheltered some refugees. His silence remains one of the most debated questions in modern Church history. ## 1945 to 1989 — The Church under communism Communist governments across Eastern Europe suppressed the Church, jailing clergy such as Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary and restricting worship. The Church became a center of resistance to state atheism. ## 11 October 1962 to 1965 — Second Vatican Council modernizes the Church The council reformed Catholic worship and teaching, allowed Mass in local languages, and opened dialogue with other faiths and the modern world. It was the most far reaching change in the Church in centuries. ## 1963 — The debate over Pius XII and the Holocaust After the war, and especially after a 1963 play attacked the pope's wartime record, historians divided sharply over Pius XII. Critics argue he failed to openly condemn the genocide of Europe's Jews, while defenders point to Vatican-directed efforts to shelter Jews in Rome and elsewhere. The Vatican opened his archives in 2020, and scholars continue to disagree. ## 28 October 1965 — Nostra Aetate repudiates the deicide charge On 28 October 1965 the Second Vatican Council promulgated Nostra Aetate, which rejected the idea that the Jewish people as a whole were collectively guilty of the death of Christ and condemned antisemitism and hatred against Jews. It marked a decisive break with the deicide accusation the Church had carried for centuries. The reversal came only two decades after the Holocaust. ## 16 October 1978 — John Paul II elected pope The Polish cardinal Karol Wojtyla became the first non-Italian pope in over 450 years. His election brought a figure from behind the Iron Curtain to the head of the global Church. ## 2 June 1979 — John Paul II's first visit to Poland The pope returned to communist Poland and drew vast crowds, encouraging Poles to resist fear. The visit is widely seen as a spark for the Solidarity movement and the wider challenge to Soviet control. ## 13 May 1981 — Assassination attempt on John Paul II A Turkish gunman shot and gravely wounded the pope in Saint Peter's Square. The pope survived and later met and forgave his attacker. ## 18 June 1982 — Banco Ambrosiano and the death of Roberto Calvi Roberto Calvi, head of Italy's Banco Ambrosiano and known as God's Banker for his Vatican ties, was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge in London. The bank collapsed amid massive fraud, and the Vatican Bank was its main shareholder. The Holy See denied wrongdoing but paid creditors about 240 million dollars in 1984, and the affair exposed the murky finances of the Vatican. ## 13 April 1986 — John Paul II visits the Synagogue of Rome On 13 April 1986 Pope John Paul II entered the Great Synagogue of Rome, the first recorded visit by a pope to a synagogue since the early Church. He called the Jews the elder brothers of Christians and again condemned antisemitism. The visit built on Nostra Aetate and signaled a lasting shift toward reconciliation. ## 1989 — The Vatican and the fall of communism As communist governments fell across Eastern Europe, the Church under John Paul II was credited with helping inspire the change. The collapse restored Church freedom in much of the former Soviet bloc. ## 26 March 2000 — John Paul II's apology at the Western Wall In March 2000 Pope John Paul II made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and prayed at the Western Wall, leaving a written prayer that asked God's forgiveness for Christian wrongs against the Jews. It followed the Vatican's 1998 document We Remember, which expressed repentance for Catholics who failed to resist the Nazi genocide. Critics found the apology guarded, noting that it distinguished the sins of Church members from the Church itself. ## 6 January 2002 — The abuse crisis becomes public Reporting by the Boston Globe revealed that Church leaders had covered up decades of child sexual abuse by clergy. The exposure set off investigations worldwide and a lasting reckoning over Church accountability. ## 27 February 2004 — The John Jay Report on abuse in the US Church Commissioned by the US bishops, a study by the John Jay College documented accusations against more than four thousand priests and over ten thousand reported victims between 1950 and 2002. It was the first large-scale accounting of the scale of clerical sexual abuse in the American Church. ## 2009 — Ireland's Ryan and Murphy Reports Two official Irish inquiries reported in 2009. The Ryan Report described widespread physical and sexual abuse in Church-run industrial schools, while the Murphy Report found that the Dublin archdiocese had concealed abuse to protect the institution's reputation. Together they broke the moral authority of the Church in Ireland. ## 2013 to 2017 — Australia's royal commission on child abuse A national royal commission examined how institutions responded to child sexual abuse and found that the Catholic Church accounted for the largest share of cases. It reported that about seven percent of priests in Australia had been accused, and its findings drove new laws on reporting abuse. ## 11 February 2013 — Benedict XVI resigns the papacy Pope Benedict XVI announced he would step down, the first pope to resign in nearly six hundred years. His decision cited failing strength amid the pressures of the office. ## 13 March 2013 — Pope Francis elected The Argentine cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio became the first Jesuit and first Latin American pope, taking the name Francis. His election marked a shift toward the Church's growing membership in the global South. ## 2014 — Mother-and-baby homes and the Tuam scandal A local historian's research revealed that a Catholic-run home for unmarried mothers in Tuam had buried hundreds of infants, some in a disused sewage structure. A 2021 Irish commission found that about nine thousand children died in such homes across the country, and the government and Church apologized for decades of neglect and secrecy. ## 2018 to 2019 — Pope Francis and the abuse reckoning After a crisis in Chile and revelations about the former US cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was expelled from the priesthood in 2019, Pope Francis convened a global summit of bishops on protecting minors. The Church issued new rules requiring the reporting of abuse and cover-ups, though critics said the measures fell short of true accountability. ## 14 August 2018 — The Pennsylvania grand jury report A grand jury found that about three hundred priests in six Pennsylvania dioceses had abused more than a thousand children over seventy years, and that bishops had systematically hidden the crimes. The report renewed pressure on the Church and prompted investigations in other US states. ## May 2021 — Unmarked graves and the papal apology in Canada Ground-penetrating radar detected what were reported as hundreds of possible unmarked graves at former residential school sites, beginning at Kamloops. The findings drew global attention, and in 2022 Pope Francis traveled to Canada and apologized for the role of Church members in the abuse and destruction of Indigenous cultures. ## c. 2023 — The global Catholic Church of 1.3 billion The Catholic Church counts roughly 1.3 billion baptized members, about a sixth of the world's people, with its fastest growth in Africa and Asia. It remains one of the largest and oldest continuous institutions on Earth.