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t. e. The history of the Catholic Church is the formation, events, and historical development of the Catholic Church through time. According to the tradition of the Catholic Church, it started from the day of Pentecost at the upper room of Jerusalem; [1] the Catholic tradition considers that the Church is a continuation of the early Christian ...
Byzantine image depicting Jesus as Christ pantocrator. 4 BC: Nativity of Jesus.According to the Gospel of Luke, his birth occurred in the town of Bethlehem during the reigns of King Herod the Great of Judaea and the Roman Emperor Augustus, and he was the son of the Virgin Mary, who conceived him by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.28 to 1.39 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2024. [ 4 ] [ 5 ] [ 9 ] It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions and has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization .
Some use the term "Roman Catholic" to refer to Latin Church Catholics who predominantly (but not exclusively) worship according to the Roman Rite, as opposed to Eastern Catholics. An example is the statement in the book When other Christians become Catholic: "the individual becomes Eastern Catholic, not Roman Catholic."
The term catholicism is the English form of Late Latin catholicismus, an abstract noun based on the adjective catholic. The Modern Greek equivalent καθολικισμός katholikismos is back-formed and usually refers to the Catholic Church. The terms catholic, catholicism, and catholicity are closely related to the use of the term Catholic ...
History of the papacy. According to Roman Catholicism, the history of the papacy, the office held by the pope as head of the Catholic Church, spans from the time of Peter to the present day. [1] In the first three centuries of the Christian era, many of Peter's successors as bishops of Rome are obscure figures, most suffering martyrdom along ...
Christianity as the Roman state religion. In the year before the Council of Constantinople in 381, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire when Emperor Theodosius I issued the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, [ 1 ] which recognized the catholic orthodoxy [ a ] of Nicene Christians as the Roman Empire's state religion. [ 3 ...
Ecclesiastical history of the Catholic Church refers to the history of the Catholic Church as an institution, written from a particular perspective. There is a traditional approach to such historiography. The generally identified starting point is Eusebius of Caesarea, and his work Church History. Since there is no assumption that contemporary ...