Popes Trivia

When Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope in 2013, he was the first to choose a new name since the early 10th century - Francis. While there have been hundreds of Popes, can you identify the last fifteen original names from this list prior to Francis?

The Catholic Church has a pope at its head who lives in the Vatican. When a new pope is required, the College of Cardinals elects a man of the Catholic faith to fulfill the role. He then chooses his papal name and begins to serve as pope.

When a new Pope is chosen, fuma bianca (white smoke) announces to the world that the decision has been made. Can you match these Popes to the brief facts about each of them?

Here are a few interesting facts and historical events which took place during the papacy of some of the popes who headed the early Christian church.

On Monday, 11 February 2013, Pope Benedict XVI announced that he was retiring. The news shook the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics. Let's look into the facts about the historic abdication of the most powerful religious leader on Earth.

Greetings, Pope-pickers! This isn't a Pop Quiz - it's a Pope Quiz, so let's ponder a panorama of past Pontiffs. Dates in parentheses after Papal names refer to years of Papacy, not birth and death.

In 2013, "TIME" Magazine named Pope Francis the Person of the Year. Learn why this transformational figure is known as "The People's Pope".

In early Catholic history the pope was often more than a religious leader. He was sometimes a political figure of power. Some popes were saints and some were not so saintly. Documents of very early Christian history are often vague or lacking detail.

Here are 10 questions about the Papacy. Some of them will be about Papal practices and some will be about specific Popes. Read carefully for clues.

John Paul I reigned as pope for only a short time, yet his papacy was not without controversy. His successor, John Paul II, in tribute to him assumed the same papal name.