Pope

Pope

Subject – IR

Context – On Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi calls on Pope Francis, head of the sovereign of the Vatican City State, for a 30-minute meeting.

Concept –

• Pope, (Latin papa, from Greek pappas, “father”), the title, since about the 9th century, of the bishop of Rome, the head of the Roman Catholic Church.
• It was formerly given, especially from the 3rd to the 5th century, to any bishop and sometimes to simple priests as an ecclesiastical title expressing affectionate respect.
• He is thehead of the worldwide Catholic Church and head of state or sovereign of the Vatican City State.
• According to Catholics, the primacy of the bishop of Rome is largely derived from his role as the apostolic successor to Saint Peter, to whom primacy was conferred by Jesus, giving him the Keys of Heaven.
• While his office is called the papacy, the jurisdiction of the episcopal see is called the Holy See.
• It is the Holy See that is the sovereign entity by international law headquartered in the distinctively independent Vatican City State, a city-state enclaved within Rome, established by the Lateran Treaty in 1929 between Italy and the Holy See to ensure its temporal and spiritual independence.

Pope and India –

• PM Modi became the fifth Indian Prime Minister to have visited the head of Roman Catholics, the largest religious denomination in the world.
• The Roman Catholic Church also wields influence in Kerala
• Christians are the third largest religious community in India. According to Census 2011, they form 2.3 per cent of the population, behind Hindus (79.8%) and Muslims (14.2%).
• Before Modi, Prime Ministers Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, I K Gujral, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee had met the then Popes in the Vatican.

Popes in India

• The first Pope to visit India was Paul IV, who travelled to Mumbai in 1964 to attend the International Eucharistic Congress.