Pope John Paul II was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his death in 2005. He was later canonised as Pope Saint John Paul II.
Pope Benedict XVI was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 19 April 2005 until his resignation on 28 February 2013. Benedict's election as pope occurred in the 2005 papal conclave that followed the death of Pope John Paul II. Benedict chose to be known as "Pope emeritus" upon his resignation, and he retained this title until his death in December 2022.
World Youth Day (WYD) is an event for young people organized by the Catholic Church that was initiated by Pope John Paul II in 1985. Its concept has been influenced by the Light-Life Movement that has existed in Poland since the 1960s, where during summer camps Catholic young adults over 13 days of camp celebrated a "day of community". For the first celebration of WYD in 1986, bishops were invited to schedule an annual youth event to be held every Palm Sunday in their dioceses. Nicknamed "The Catholic Woodstock", it is celebrated at the diocesan level annually—in most places on Palm Sunday from 1986 to 2020, and from 2021 on Christ the King Sunday—and at the international level every two to three years at different locations. The 1995 World Youth Day closing Mass in the Philippines set a world record for the largest number of people gathered for a single religious event with 5 million attendees. This record was surpassed when 6 million attended a Mass celebrated by Pope Francis—again in the Philippines—20 years later in 2015.
The popemobile is a specially designed motor vehicle used by the pope of the Catholic Church during public appearances. It is considered a successor to the sedia gestatoria and was designed to allow the pope to be more visible when greeting large crowds.
XX World Youth Day was a Catholic youth festival that started on 16 August and continued until 21 August 2005 in Cologne, Germany, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the first World Youth Day held in 1985. It was the first World Youth Day and foreign trip of Pope Benedict XVI, who joined the festival on 18 August. This meeting was decided by the previous pope, John Paul II, during the Toronto World Youth Day of 2002. The theme was "We have come to worship Him".
Pope John Paul II reigned as pope of the Roman Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State for 26 years from October 1978 to his death, on 2 April 2005. Since his death, many thousands of people have been supporting the case for beatifying and canonising Pope John Paul II as a saint. His formal beatification ceremony took place on 1 May 2011.
The relations between Pope Benedict XVI and Judaism remained fairly good, although concerns were raised by Jewish leaders over the political impact of Traditionalists in the Church during the papacy of Benedict.
Luis Rafael Zarama Pasqualetto is a Colombian-born American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church who has been serving as the bishop of the Diocese of Raleigh in North Carolina since 2017. He previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Atlanta from 2009 to 2017
The visit of Pope John Paul II to the United Kingdom in 1982 was the first visit there by a reigning Pope. The Pope arrived in the UK on Friday 28 May, and during his time there visited nine cities, delivering 16 major addresses. Among significant events were a meeting with Queen Elizabeth II, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, a joint service alongside the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie at Canterbury Cathedral, meeting with and addressing the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland at The Mound, and five large open air Masses in London, Coventry, Manchester, Glasgow, and Cardiff. Following his six-day visit which took him to locations in England, Scotland and Wales, he returned to the Vatican on 2 June.
The resignation of Pope Benedict XVI took effect on 28 February 2013 at 20:00 CET, following his announcement of it on 11 February. It made him the first pope to relinquish the office since Gregory XII was forced to resign in 1415 to end the Western Schism, and the first pope to voluntarily resign since Celestine V in 1294.
The papal inauguration of Pope Francis was held on 19 March 2013 in St. Peter's Square in the Vatican. Holy Mass was celebrated by Pope Francis before political and religious leaders from around the world. The crowd was estimated between 150,000 and 200,000. Official delegations from 132 states and various religious groups attended. It was the first papal inauguration attended by the Patriarch of Constantinople in over 1,000 years.
Jennifer Pascual, DSG is an American organist and conductor. Since 2003, she has been the director of music at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City.
Pope Francis visited North America—Cuba and the United States—from 19 to 27 September 2015. It was his first state visit to both Cuba and the U.S., as well as the third official papal visit to Cuba and the seventh to the United States since the U.S. established full diplomatic relations with the Holy See in 1984.
On 31 December 2022, at 09:34 Central European Time (UTC+1), Pope Benedict XVI died at the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in Vatican City at the age of 95. He had been pope emeritus since his resignation as the leader of the Catholic Church in 2013 due to ill health. His death ended a nine-year period during which an incumbent pope and a retired pope both lived within Vatican City.
