The pope is the bishop of Rome and the visible head of the worldwide Catholic Church. He is also known as the supreme pontiff, Roman pontiff, or sovereign pontiff. From the eighth century until 1870, the pope was the sovereign or head of state of the Papal States, and since 1929 of the much smaller Vatican City state. The reigning pope is Francis, who was elected on 13 March 2013. From a Catholic viewpoint, 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, who gave Peter the Keys of Heaven and the powers of "binding and loosing", naming him as the "rock" upon which the Church would be built.
Theocracy is a form of autocracy in which one or more deities are recognized as supreme ruling authorities, giving divine guidance to human intermediaries who manage the government's daily affairs.
A prince-bishop is a bishop who is also the civil ruler of some secular principality and sovereignty, as opposed to Prince of the Church itself, a title associated with cardinals. Since 1951, the sole extant prince-bishop has been the Bishop of Urgell, Catalonia, who has remained ex officio one of two co-princes of Andorra, along with the French president.
The highest-ranking bishops in Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, the Catholic Church, the Hussite Church, Church of the East, and some Independent Catholic Churches are termed patriarchs.
Joan-Enric Vives i Sicília is a Spanish prelate of the Catholic Church who has served as Bishop of Urgell and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra since 2003. He has had the personal title of archbishop since 2019.
The Diocese of Urgell is a Latin Church diocese of the Catholic Church in Catalonia (Spain) and the Principality of Andorra in the historical County of Urgell, with origins in the fifth century AD or possibly earlier. It is based in the region of the historical Catalan County of Urgell, though it has different borders. The seat and Cathedral of the bishop are situated in la Seu d'Urgell town. The state of Andorra is a part of this diocese.
The magisterium of the Catholic Church is the church's authority or office to give authentic interpretation of the word of God, "whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition". According to the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, the task of interpretation is vested uniquely in the Pope and the bishops, though the concept has a complex history of development. Scripture and Tradition "make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the Church", and the magisterium is not independent of this, since "all that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is derived from this single deposit of faith".
Josep Caixal i Estradé (1803–1879) was Bishop of Urgell from 1853 until his death in Rome in 1879 and co-prince of Andorra during the New Reform period.
The co-princes of Andorra are jointly the heads of state of the Principality of Andorra, a landlocked microstate lying in the Pyrenees between France and Spain. Founded in 1278 by a treaty between the bishop of Urgell and the Count of Foix, this unique diarchical arrangement has persisted through the Middle Ages to the present. Currently, the bishop of Urgell and the president of France serve as Andorra's co-princes, following the transfer of the count of Foix's claims to the Crown of France and, subsequently, to the head of state of the French Republic. Each co-prince appoints a personal representative, the Bishop co-prince is currently being represented by Josep Maria Mauri and the French co-prince by Patrick Strzoda.
Diarchy, duarchy, or duumvirate is a form of government characterized by co-rule, with two people ruling a polity together either lawfully or de facto, by collusion and force. The leaders of such a system are usually known as corulers.
The Catholic Church in Andorra is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome.
Capital punishment in Vatican City was legal between 1929 and 1969, reserved for attempted assassination of the Pope, but has never been applied there. Executions were carried out elsewhere in the Papal States, which was the predecessor of the Vatican City, during their existence.
Juan Baptista Benlloch i Vivó was a Spanish cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who was Archbishop of Burgos from 1919, who was elevated to the cardinalate in 1921, and who, as Co-Prince of Andorra, composed the text for "El Gran Carlemany", that country's national anthem.
The current United States Ambassador to the Holy See is Joe Donnelly, who replaced the ad interim Chargé d'Affaires, Patrick Connell, on April 11, 2021. The Holy See is represented by its apostolic nuncio, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, who assumed office on April 12, 2016. The U.S. Embassy to the Holy See is located in Rome, in the Villa Domiziana. The Nunciature to the United States is located in Washington, D.C., at 3339 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Papal infallibility is a dogma of the Catholic Church which states that, in virtue of the promise of Jesus to Peter, the Pope when he speaks ex cathedra is preserved from the possibility of error on doctrine "initially given to the apostolic Church and handed down in Scripture and tradition". It does not mean that the pope cannot sin or otherwise err in some capacity, though he is prevented by the assistance of the Holy Spirit from issuing heretical teaching even in his non-infallible Magisterium, as a corollary of indefectibility. This doctrine, defined dogmatically at the First Vatican Council of 1869–1870 in the document Pastor aeternus, is claimed to have existed in medieval theology and to have been the majority opinion at the time of the Counter-Reformation.
Holy See–Soviet Union relations were marked by long-standing ideological disagreements between the Catholic Church and the Soviet Union. The Holy See attempted to enter in a pragmatic dialogue with Soviet leaders during the papacies of John XXIII and Paul VI. In the 1990s, Pope John Paul II's diplomatic policies were cited as one of the principal factors that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The orders, decorations, and medals of the Holy See include titles, chivalric orders, distinctions and medals honoured by the Holy See, with the Pope as the fount of honour, for deeds and merits of their recipients to the benefit of the Holy See, the Catholic Church, or their respective communities, societies, nations and the world at large.
The titles of the Bishop of Rome, more often referred to as the papal titles, refer to the various titles used by protocol, as a form of addressing or designating a theological or secular reality of the Bishop of Rome (Pope). The Catholic Church believes that they "constitute what has been termed a primacy of honor. These prerogatives are not, like his jurisdictional rights, tied to the divine jure of his office. They have grown in the course of history, and have been enshrined by the passage of centuries, but they are not free from modification."
Josep-Lluís Serrano Pentinat is a Spanish prelate of the Catholic Church who has served as coadjutor bishop of Urgell since 2024, with the right to succeed Joan Enric Vives i Sicília as Bishop of Urgell and Co-Prince of Andorra. He became Spain's youngest bishop. Serrano worked in the diplomatic service of the Holy See from 2012 to 2024.
