Pope
pohp
noun
The Bishop of Rome, as head of the Catholic Church
After a blisteringly quick conclave the College of Cardinals have elected the American Robert Prevost, a young whippersnapper at only 69, who will take the papal name Leo XIV.
While everybody knows the bloke in the snazzy hat as ‘the Pope’, ‘Pope’ isn’t actually one of his official titles, of which there are actually quite a few. ‘Pope’ comes ultimately from an Ancient Greek word, ‘pappas’, meaning ‘father’, and originally (ie, around the 3rd century) referred to any bishop of the church. The earliest record of the word being applied specifically to the Bishop of Rome (one of the Pope’s ‘real’ titles) dates to the late 3rd century.
By far the most interesting of the Pope’s real titles is ‘Supreme Pontiff’. ‘Pontiff’ comes from the Latin word ‘pontifex’ which literally means ‘bridge builder’. Originally a ‘pontifex’ was a member of the Roman College of Pontiffs, the body responsible for organising sacrifices in pre-Christian Rome. The head of the College of Pontiffs, known as the ‘Pontifex Maximus’, was the highest ranking priest in Rome, and the position was once held by Julius Caesar.