The Christian Science Monitor

'The Pope Who Would Be King' details the birth of the modern papacy

Pope Francis, the current supreme pontiff of the Catholic Church, wields two different kinds of authority, one vast and one minuscule. The vast one is obvious: The Pope is seen as the heir to St. Peter, the spiritual leader of the world's more than 1 billion Catholics. The minuscule one is often something people have to make an effort to remember: The Pope is also the chief executive of a kind of government, the head official of the Holy See, which is quartered in

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