The Popecast: A History of the Papacy

Our pope this week reigned at a time when the historical record wasn’t much, and we don’t know a whole lot about his life as a result. And yet his contributions to the history of the papacy have still resounded for over 1600 years.

Read Pope St. Siricius' full letter: https://thepopecast.fm/blog/siricius-decretal

Today we chat with Andrew Gillsmith, author of the new and critically-acclaimed sci-fi novel, Our Lady of the Artilects. The book is absolutely outstanding (find the link to purchase it below) in its merging together of a plausible ultra-high-tech future and a global landscape that's shifted both geographically and spiritually.

GET THE BOOK: https://amzn.to/3E8bFpq

Find Andrew on Twitter @andrewgillsmith

Other book references from Andrew:
- In the Camps: China's High Tech Penal Colony - https://amzn.to/3TRMKN2
- The Fourth Secret of Fatima - https://amzn.to/3Ai60MD

Our pope this week was your garden variety early Church pontiff – battling heresy, beautifying churches, and being an all around good guy. But one thing set him apart...sending a certain snake-expelling bishop on mission to a little island in the North Atlantic, and changing the face of the world forever.

Our pope this week was in the Chair of Peter for barely a moment in the great lifespan of Catholic history, but his humble heart and joyful demeanor has influenced each of the three popes that have followed him and put him firmly among the most memorable and beloved pontiffs of the last several centuries.

And yes, this is the second time we’ve covered him on the show, but he deserved a refresh – after all, on the day this is being released, our pope will be BEATIFIED by Pope Francis in Rome.

First it was Peter. Then it was Linus. And then it was this guy.

Today's episode is a great conversation with Timothy Nerozzi, who currently works as a Breaking News Reporter for Fox News. Timothy shares his take in particular on why secular reporting about the pope is quite terrible these days, his approach to journalism, and then of course we go into great detail on the office of the papacy itself – why we should keep a level head about Pope Francis, how the papacy has been changing over the past century, and a ton more.

In addition to his work at Fox News Digital, Timothy has written for a large swath of solid publications, including Catholic News Agency, The Lamp Magazine, Washington Examiner, and the Daily Caller.

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Now, here at The Popecast we normally cover those men who are considered to be “valid popes” – that is, a legitimate part of the unbroken line of succession in the Roman Catholic Church that began when Jesus gave the keys to Peter and, as is commonly understood, sits now with Pope Francis.

And while there have been grandiose antipopes throughout history – men who we may one day talk about in more detail – today’s subject is another case entirely. Few may know about the man from Kansas who claimed to be pope, and unironically so.

Recently he died, so today’s episode will tell the story of and serve as a tribute for David Bawden, the man who for the past 32 years had – by his estimation – reigned over the true Catholic Church as Pope Michael.

This pope is another one of those best kept secrets of Catholic history – he held some of the most influential post in Renaissance Christendom, presided over Catholicism’s response to the Protestant Reformation, and then cracked the top 10 for shortest papal reigns. But his mom sure would have been proud that he kept the name she gave him.

Matt had the pleasure of being a guest on Real Presence Radio out in the Midwest, on a show hosted by none other than our most recent special guest Fr. Richard Kunst, to talk about the origins of The Popecast and his own personal favorite popes and papal history stories, among other things.

Today’s pope is certainly one for the record books. Even though he was only in office a couple short years, he’s memorable for one major papal staple that we take completely for granted these days.

Today’s episode is one we’ve been very excited to bring you all for a long time. Our guest, Fr. Richard Kunst, is the curator of the world's largest collection of papal memorabilia and artifacts outside of the Vatican. Our conversation covers everything from how Fr. Rich’s collection came to be, some of the coolest and strangest articles he’s seen, his appearances on Pawn Stars, and (in the patron-only bonus section) even some never-before-heard stories about BOTH Popes John Paul.

In addition to curating this great collection, Fr. Rich is a priest of the Diocese of Duluth Minnesota, pastor of St. James Parish in Duluth, and believe it or not, was even at one time Fr. Mike Schmitz’s vocation director when the latter was in formation for the priesthood.

Our man this episode is altogether unique – and not just because he’s the only Successor of Peter with this particular name. No, he’s actually most famous for something he had no control over at all – because he was dead.

This episode is about another one of those popes who you’ve probably never heard of, but is definitely one to remember. He was saintly from an early age, and despite desiring a life of anonymity in his service to Christendom, was plucked by the emperor from obscurity to become pope and, ultimately, usher in one of the biggest reform movements in Catholicism’s 2,000 year history.

Today’s episode is about a pope who’s probably easy to overlook. He only reigned for a short time, we don’t know all that much about him, and he isn’t remembered as a saint – a canonized one anyway. And yet, he dabbled in plenty of important things and did alright.

Today’s episode is about a pope who lived...and died...during the last and worst of Rome’s persecutions of the Christian people, that of the Roman Emperor Diocletian. But just how that living and dying went is still up for discussion. 1700 years later.

Here's a pope who kept his head down and worked tirelessly for the good of Christendom. But in an age where secular rulers used the papacy as their plaything, he refused to be anyone’s puppet, and ended up paying the ultimate price. And what’s more, everyone though he was a bad pope until not all that long ago.

This episode we're joined by JD Flynn and Michelle La Rosa from The PIllar to tackle one of the saltiest and most recent papal conspiracy theories – one of the doozies in pretty much the whole history of the Catholic Church. A half-century ago a pope reigned for a mere 33 days. Was it all just a strange coincidence, or was there something more nefarious afoot?

This week's episode is a very special one indeed. Our pope today needs no introduction, being one of the finest men to ever grace the Chair of St. Peter, but he does need a long episode to tell the whole tale of his long and eventful life. October 22 – the day that this episode is being released – is this man’s feast day and the anniversary of the 1978 inauguration of his papacy, so raise a glass (or a pierogi) for one of the greatest of all pontiffs.

This pope is a guy who rose from the lowest rungs of society to become the leader of a burgeoning but still illegal faith. And yet, it wasn’t the Romans who gave him the most grief. It was one of his fellow Christians.

Today’s episode is a Popecast Redux about a pope who may well have single-handedly kept the known world from a very, very different future. In fact, 2021 marks the 450th anniversary of his masterstroke – a convening of both corporeal and a spiritual armies to lead the Catholic Christian West to victory in one of the greatest sea battles ever fought.

Our pope this week was in the Chair of Peter for barely a moment in the great lifespan of Catholic history, but his humble heart and joyful demeanor has influenced each of the three popes who followed him and put him firmly among the most memorable and beloved pontiffs of the last several centuries.

Our pope this week was a pontiff in exile – the whole Roman Curia was in those days – who everyone thought would be near death, but he ended up sticking around for 10 years and set about cleaning up the clerical riff-raff, leaving us with one of the greatest hymns ever written, and hiring a bloodhound in a red hat to prowl around Italy and gain back what was rightfully Peter’s.

Joining the show this week is special guest Eduard Habsburg, the Hungarian Ambassador to the Vatican and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, sharing the incredible story of Pope St. Gregory the Great, the "Pope Who Founded Western Civilization"

This pope was far more renowned for his life BEFORE the papacy than he was after. And that was a bummer, because he kinda gets a bad rap for it. But it certainly didn’t help that he avoided accepting his election like the plague.

Our pope this week was startlingly good for a Renaissance pontiff – he didn’t use his power to elevate all of his greedy nephews, he began as a monk and never really forgot it, and he worked so hard and so much that he could have coined the phrase “I can sleep when I’m dead.”

This guy was an able pontiff who brought much-needed respect back to the papacy at its lowest point in history. And on the family front, he was a real diamond in the rough. A lone bright spot amidst a group of relatives that would make the Kardashians blush.

This pope wasn’t long for this world once he made it to the Chair of St. Peter and was a compromise pick from the beginning, to boot. Apparently it had something to do with being just another pretty face, but history is silent on whether or not he was a ...barbarian.

Our pope this week hit a lot of firsts – first Latin-writing pope, first African pope, and the first papal hothead. Good thing he had the humility to match it.

Our pope this week voted in literally one million papal elections before it was finally his turn. At least it probably seemed like that to him. He was a child of the nobility who served the Church from an early age, but there was just one small thing left to do after he got elected as the new Bishop of Rome...

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He was one of the last solid pontiffs before perhaps the darkest time in the history of the papacy. He held off the Muslim Army as long as he could, spent way too long looking for new emperors, was a patron of one of the Church’s greatest evangelists, and sadly was the first Bishop of Rome in history to meet a certain kind of sordid end.

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Our pope this week was only in office a short time, but still managed to leave a mark that’s resounded through the ages in battling one of early Christianity’s most monumental heresies. He’s also one of just three pontiffs in history to have a name that starts with the letter Z.

Our man this week was a mentor to one of the greatest popes to ever live, he spent far too much time trying to drum up an army from the emperor to protect Rome from destruction, and met his earthly end as a deadly disease swept brutally through late 6th-Century Rome.

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This week is an extra special a CROSSOVER episode with the excellent podcast The Quizzical Papist – Your “extraordinary form” bar trivia with Fr. Brad and Grace. If you’ve ever been to bar trivia – or if you can even remember what that’s like after the long winter of 2020, that’s the exact structure of their show and, as a result, this crossover.

Grace and Matt battled it out over two rounds – the first half you’ll find on The Quizzical Papist, so make sure you go over and start there. Our half of the show has the second round and final results of the great papist showdown.

FIRST HALF IN THE LINK BELOW!

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Our first episode of 2021 is a very special one indeed. This week we’re joined by JD Flynn & Ed Condon, co-founders of The Pillar, the brand new Catholic media project focused on smart, faithful, and serious journalism, from committed and informed Catholics who love the Church, which you can find and sign up for at pillarcatholic.com.

Special Guests: Ed Condon and JD Flynn.

Our special guest this week is Fr. Harrison from Clerically Speaking – not only is Fr. Harrison a huge fan of Pope Benedict XVI, he's writing his doctoral thesis on the guy!

But don't worry, this episode isn't super heady or academic as much as it is simply Matt & Fr. Harrison nerding out on their shared love for Pope Benedict XVI and why he's just as important to the average person in the pews as he is to the great Catholic intellectual tradition as a whole.

Special Guest: Fr. Harrison Ayre.

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This episode is a bit unique. It’s early December, so our Catholic listeners will know that there are two mega huge feast days celebrating Mary in the first half of this month – the Immaculate Conception on December 8 and Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12.

So we thought it might be fitting to break from the usual format and talk about the Mother of God under one of those titles, and what two 20th-Century popes have to say about her.

Our pope this week had the fun job of wrangling a bunch of Alphas and convincing them to work as a team for the sake of Christendom, and in the meantime tried not to lose everything the papacy had accumulated up to that point in history. Oh, and his nephew would later end up being one of the most powerful popes in history.

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Our pope this week you might not know, but odds are you know about something he did. I’m talking about the biggest and oldest unreinforced concrete dome IN THE WORLD. He converted it from a pagan temple into a church, which has been in constant use now for over 1400 years.

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Our pope this week wasn’t around for long, but the time he did spend in office left its mark. He entered the Chair of Peter at a dicey time in Christian history and dealt with an arch nemesis from within the Church right after his election, to boot. He was eventually killed for his faith, and is now the patron saint of things like lovers and earaches.

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This pope was old and sick when he got elected, and wasn’t in office for all that long. But he wasn’t about to let any younger whipper snappers outdo him in energy or productivity. Oh, he also made the founder of the Jesuits a saint, and wrote the last document from a pope about when certain someones could or could not be burned at the stake.

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Our pope this week is in elite company in more ways than one – he was holy when sanctity was severely lacking in the halls of the Vatican, and he’s one of only FIVE men in history from the Order of Preachers to be elevated to the Chair of St. Peter.

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Our pope this week faced down an invading king, fought against a nasty heresy in the East, and has something in common with just FIVE other popes in all of Church history. Oh, and he’s not the St. Paul you’re probably thinking of.

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Our pope this week was the first to hold the most popular papal name in Catholic Church history. A divisive figure in his early days, he repented of his old ways and went on to become so renowned that the emperor himself prostrated himself at this pope’s feet.

It just so happens that Episode #53 is on Pope #53. We swear we didn't realize this until after the episode was recorded.

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The pope we’re talking about today had to follow the Fisherman himself. He’s a man who not only knew the Apostles, but was taught and ordained by them. Not to mention he’s one of only two popes – not counting Peter himself – to be mentioned in Sacred Scripture.

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This week on the Popecast we have a very special guest: Author Joe Heschmeyer. Joe is a fellow pope nerd like you and me who’s just written a great book on the papacy entitled Pope Peter: Defending the Church's Most Distinctive Doctrine in a Time of Crisis.

Joe was once a litigator living in Washington DC and then was a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, but he now teaches at the Holy Family School of Faith in Kansas City, Missouri and continues to run the popular blog Shameless Popery. We hope you enjoy this great conversation with Joe Heschmeyer.

SUPPORT THE POPECAST
Click here to become a patron of The Popecast: patreon.com/thepopecast

Special Guest: Joe Heschmeyer.

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This time around we’re doing a little something different – a topic that’s more foundational to the very papacy itself – to celebrate the 50th episode of The Popecast. It's the only truly secret meeting left on the planet. Where all the red hats gather for a Catholic cage match, and the world waits, holding its breath, for that fateful white smoke.

IN THIS EPISODE
00:16 - Catholic Balm Co (Sponsor) – Enter the keyword POPE at catholicbalm.co
03:03 - Defining key terms
06:31 - History of papal elections
11:32 - What happens when the pope dies / resigns?
17:13 - Papal election fun facts
19:06 - Excerpt from Pope St. John Paul II

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Our pope this week had barely been a priest 10 years before being elected at age 55, had one of Catholicism’s great Renaissance saints as his confessor for 3 decades and, oh yeah, he’s the one who brought coffee to the Western World.

It’s fitting that our sponsor for this week is Guadalupe Roastery! These guys are the real deal – not only is their coffee excellent, but their mission is to empower farmers to support themselves and their families by bringing you the most directly sourced cup of coffee possible.

So head on over to guadaluperoastery.com and get a couple pounds for you and a friend. Be sure to use the promo code POPE at checkout to get 10% off your entire order!

Click here to become a patron of The Popecast: patreon.com/thepopecast

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Our pope this week is one unlike any other of the 265 successors of St. Peter. Smart and eloquent with a pen though he was, for most of his life he was best known as a smooth-talking womanizer and deadbeat dad whose only goal was elevating his own career, all the way up to being crowned as the emperor’s imperial poet.

And then he met the pope (who he hated), and everything changed.

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Today’s episode is sponsored by our friends over at Sock Religious (sockreligious.com), where you’ll find all sorts of different saint-themed socks to spice up your Sunday best.

They’ve got Pope Francis & St. John Paul II themed socks along with a ton of other excellent designs that make for awesome birthday presents or honestly just a nice treat-yo-self gift.

So head over to sockreligious.com and say The Popecast sent you!

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