Pope, in Latin, papa, from the Greek pappas, meaning father, an ecclesiastical title expressing affection and respect and, since the 8th century, recognized in the West as belonging exclusively to the bishop of Rome, head of the Roman Catholic church. During the 4th and 5th centuries bishops were sometimes called pope. The title is still accorded the Coptic patriarch of Alexandria, Egypt. Priests of the Orthodox churches may also be called pappa, reflecting the sense of the original Greek word.

Besides the designation pope, the head of the Roman Catholic church also holds these titles: vicar of Christ; successor of Saint Peter; supreme pontiff of the universal church; patriarch of the West; primate of Italy; archbishop and metropolitan of the Roman province; sovereign of the State of Vatican City; and servant of the servants of God.

Facts: The office of the Pope has killed more people than Hitler, or any other tyrant. There are so many bodies of the saints under Rome that they could not even put a subway under it, read Foxes Book Of Martyrs. The Popes have been whore mongers, killers, drunks, thieves, and liars. They have had homosexual relationships with young men, and babies that were aborted by the nuns that got pregnant by them.

Trinity (theology), in Christian theology, doctrine that God exists as three persons Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who are united in one substance or being. The doctrine is not taught explicitly in the New Testament, where the word God almost invariably refers to the Father; but already Jesus Christ, the Son, is seen as standing in a unique relation to the Father, while the Holy Spirit is also emerging as a distinct divine person.

The term trinitas was first used in the 2nd century, by the Latin theologian Tertullian, but the concept was developed in the course of the debates on the nature of Christ (see CHRISTOLOGY). In the 4th century, the doctrine was finally formulated; using terminology still employed by Christian theologians, the doctrine taught the coequality of the persons of the Godhead. In the West, the 4th-century theologian St. Augustine's influential work De Trinitate (On the Trinity, 400-16) compared the three-in-oneness of God with analogous structures in the human mind and suggested that the Holy Spirit may be understood as the mutual love between Father and Son (although this second point seems difficult to reconcile with the belief that the Spirit is a distinct, coequal member of the Trinity). The stress on equality, however, was never understood as detracting from a certain primacy of the Father from whom the other two persons derive, even if they do so eternally. For an adequate understanding of the trinitarian conception of God, the distinctions among the persons of the Trinity must not become so sharp that there seems to be a plurality of gods, nor may these distinctions be swallowed up in an undifferentiated monism.

The doctrine of the Trinity may be understood on different levels. On one level, it is a means of construing the word God in Christian discourse. God is not a uniquely Christian word, and it needs specific definition in Christian theology. This need for a specifically Christian definition is already apparent in the New Testament, where Paul says, there are many 'gods' and many 'lords' yet for us there is one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 8:5-6). These words constitute the beginning of a process of clarification and definition, of which the end product is the doctrine of the Trinity. At another level, the doctrine may be seen as a transcript of Christian experience: The God of the Hebrew tradition had become known in a new way, first in the person of Christ, and then in the Spirit that moved in the church. On a third, speculative level of understanding, the doctrine reveals the dynamism of the Christian conception of God involving notions of a source, a coming forth, and a return (primordial, expressive, and unitive Being). In this sense, the Christian doctrine has parallels both in philosophy (the 19th-century German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel's Absolute) and in other religions (the Trimurti of Hinduism). See also GOD; HOLY SPIRIT; JESUS CHRIST; THEOLOGY.

Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost, in Christian belief, the third person of the Trinity, the other persons being God the Father and God the Son. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ refers to the Holy Spirit as the Counselor . . . whom the Father will send in my name (John 14:26).

A theology of the Holy Spirit developed slowly, largely in response to controversies over the relation of Jesus Christ to God the Father. In 325, the Council of Nicaea condemned as heresy the Arian teaching that the Son was a creature, neither equal to, nor coeternal with, the Father. In 381, the Council of Constantinople condemned the logical extension of that view, that the Holy Spirit was created by the Son. The council stated: I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father. Together with the Father and the Son he is adored and glorified. Later pronouncements brought only one important doctrinal change, the 9th-century addition of filioque to the creed of Constantinople. That addition, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the son, has been a source of discord between Eastern and Western Christianity ever since.

The Holy Spirit is frequently presented in Scripture through symbols: the dove (see Mark 1:10), symbolizing peace and reconciliation; a whirlwind (see Acts 2), symbolizing strength; and as tongues of fire (see Acts 2), symbolizing the ecstasy of believers. The Holy Spirit is considered the sanctifier, who leads and guides the church and its members.