Pope of the Roman Catholic Church
Seal of the Papacy
Incumbent: Benedict XVI {{#if:| }}
Styles	His Holiness
	Holy Father
Residence	Vatican City
First Pope	Saint Peter
Formation	traditionally AD 33 1
Website
Footnotes	1 Peter's installation as the first Pope is disputed by some non-Catholic theologians.

The Pope (from Latin: papa, "daddy", "tutor" blank">Etymology of ‘Pope’. ; from Greek , pápas, "papa" or "daddy", originally written , páppas, as in Odyssey VI.57 ) is the _Bishop of Rome, the spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic Church and head of state of Vatican City. Faith communities which recognize a specific concept of Apostolic Succession acknowledge the Bishop of Rome as successor of St Peter. As such, Catholics believe the pope to be the Vicar of Christ, while the other faith communities disacknowledge Petrine primacy among the bishops. The office of the pope is called the papacy; his ecclesiastical jurisdiction is called the "Holy See" (Sancta Sedes in Latin) or "Apostolic See" (the latter on the basis that both St. Peter and St. Paul were martyred at Rome). Early bishops occupying the See of Rome were designated "Vicar of Peter"; for later popes the more authoritative Vicar of Christ was substituted; this designation was first used by the Roman Synod of 495 to refer to Pope Gelasius I, an advocate of papal supremacy among the patriarchs. Marcellinus (d. 304) is the first Bishop of Rome whom sources show used the title of pope. In the 11th century, after the East-West Schism, Gregory VII declared the term "Pope" to be reserved for the Bishop of Rome. The current (265th) pope is Pope Benedict XVI, who was elected April 19, 2005 in papal conclave.

In addition to his service in this spiritual role, the pope is also Head of State of the independent sovereign state of the Vatican City, a city-state entirely enclaved by the city of Rome. Before 1870 the pope's temporal authority extended over a large area of central Italy: the territory of the Papal States. The papacy retained sovereign authority over the Papal States until the Italian unification of 1870; a final political settlement with the Italian government was not reached until the Lateran Treaty of 1929.

For over a thousand years, popes have played powerful roles in Western Europe, crowning emperors (Charlemagne was the first emperor crowned by a pope) and regulating disputes among secular rulers. Early popes helped spread Christianity and resolve doctrinal disputes. Wetterau, Bruce. World history. New York: Henry Holt and company. 1994. The Bishop of Rome continued to be nominally allied and part of the civil structure of the Byzantine Empire until the 8th century, when the Donation of Pepin gave Rome and the surrounding area to the full sovereignty of the pope, which the popes already had been de facto rulers, creating the Papal States that lasted until 1870. For centuries, the forged Donation of Constantine also provided the basis for the papacy's claim of political supremacy over the entire former Western Roman Empire.

In the Middle Ages, popes struggled with monarchs over power. Wetterau, Bruce. World history. New York: Henry Holt and company. 1994. They instituted the Catholic Reformation. Wetterau, Bruce. World history. New York: Henry Holt and company. 1994. Gradually forced to give up secular power, popes focused on spiritual issues. Wetterau, Bruce. World history. New York: Henry Holt and company. 1994. Over the centuries, the pope's claims of spiritual authority have been ever more clearly expressed since the first centuries, culminating in the proclamation of the dogma of papal infallibility for those rare occasions the pope speaks ex cathedra (literally "from the chair (of Peter)") when issuing a solemn definition of faith or morals. Wetterau, Bruce. World history. New York: Henry Holt and company. 1994. The last such occasion was in the year 1950 with the definition of the dogma of the Assumption of Mary.

Agapetus II (born in Rome; died October, 955) was Pope from May 10, 946 until his death in 955, at the time when Alberic II (932-954), son of Marozia, was governing the independent republic of Rome under the title of "Prince and Senator of the Romans."

Agapetus II, a man of some force of character, attempted to put a stop to the so-called Pornocracy, which lasted from the accession of Pope Sergius III (904-911) in 904 to the deposition of Pope John XII (955-964) in 964. His appeal to Otto I the Great (936-973) to intervene in Rome remained without immediate effect, since Alberic II's position was too strong to be attacked, but it bore fruit after his death.