THE PAPAL PROCESS

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]Welcome to the Explainer. You know, when we think of the papacy, our minds almost immediately go to this grand 2,000-year-old spiritual institution, right? We picture the robes, the ancient rituals, the deep traditions. But behind all of that pomp and circumstance, it's also a deeply human, constantly evolving administrative ledger. I mean, it's essentially history's most complicated spreadsheet. And today, we're going to look closely at the glitches, the frantic edits, and just the sheer logistical acrobatics it takes to maintain an unbroken Okay, let's dive into this.

[00:00:35]267.

[00:00:37]According to the official records, as of the election of Leo the 14th in May 2025, there have been exactly 267 recognized popes.

[00:00:45]That is just an absolutely astonishing lineage.

[00:00:49]But I really want you to think about this for a second. How do you actually keep a perfect record for 2,000 years?

[00:00:55]Just imagine trying to track any continuous sequence of leadership through the fall of the Roman Empire, right through the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, and straight into the modern day. It's a literal logistical nightmare. With all those changing borders, lost documents, and wild political power struggles, you're kind of bound to have some typos, right?

[00:01:12]Well, the Vatican actually completely agrees with you. In a surprisingly candid admission from their very own official yearbook, the Annuario Pontificio, they state in print that it is, quote, "impossible to decide which pope represented the legitimate succession at various times." No way, right? Even the official record keepers openly admit that history has some serious glitches, and maintaining a perfect timeline is, in some eras, practically impossible. Section 1: By the numbers, martyrs, saints, and names.

[00:01:43]Before we get into the really wild bureaucratic quirks and historical glitches, let's look at the staggering statistics of the early papacy to set the stage. Just look at this ratio. When we examine the the 50 consecutive popes in history, an incredible 48 out of those 50 are officially recognized as saints. Let that sink in for a moment.

[00:02:04]48 out of 50. It was a completely different era of leadership, heavily defined by this profound, unquestioned spiritual devotion. But that devotion, it came at an impossibly high price.

[00:02:17]The job was extraordinarily dangerous back then. Out of the very first 31 popes, a staggering 28 died as martyrs.

[00:02:25]So, it wasn't just a spiritual role. For centuries, being the Bishop of Rome essentially meant putting a massive target right on your own back. Now, what's really interesting about this slide is seeing how these early popes adapted their personal identities to their new religious roles. Today, we all know popes change their names. It's just a given. But how did that whole tradition start? Well, back in 533 AD, the 56th pope was elected, and his secular name just happened to be Mercurius. Yeah, Mercury. He realized pretty quickly that he couldn't very well rule the Christian church with a name honoring a pagan Roman god. So, he changed his name to John the second. And just a few decades later, John the third followed suit, taking a new name instead of his birth name Catelinus. And just like that, a massive historical tradition was officially born out of sheer pragmatism. Section two, what makes a pope? The three-day glitch of 752.

[00:03:17]Okay, so we've seen the grand, sweeping early history.

[00:03:21]But what happens when the human element causes an administrative crash? Let's zoom in on a highly specific anomaly that broke the ledger.

[00:03:29]Let's go to the year 752.

[00:03:31]Pope Zachary dies on March 15th. Eight days later, on March 23rd, a Roman priest named Stephen is unanimously elected as the new pope. Awesome, right?

[00:03:41]He moves right into the Lateran Palace, ready to get to work. But tragically, just two days after his election, while literally just going about ordinary tasks and ordering household chores, Stephen suffers a stroke and the very next day on March 26th, he dies. He was never officially consecrated. Three, he was the Pope elect for exactly three days. It is the absolute shortest tenure in the entirety of papal history. But this incredibly brief three-day term ended up creating a massive headache for historians and record keepers.

[00:04:15]So, why was it such a headache? Well, it all comes down to the rules of the time.

[00:04:20]Under the early canon law of the 8th century, a Pope's reign officially began only upon his episcopal consecration.

[00:04:27]Because Stephen died before that ceremony could actually take place, he wasn't legally considered a Pope by the standards of his own era.

[00:04:34]But here's the twist. Later on, the church changed the rules. Later canon law stated that a Pope's reign officially begins the exact moment he accepts his election. So, under those new rules, Stephen legally was a Pope.

[00:04:46]Section three, the domino effect, fixing the numbering system. Let's move to and see how this builds. Because you can't just retroactively make someone a Pope without breaking some records. Since later record keepers decided our three-day Stephen was a legitimate Pope under the revised rules, they anachronistically inserted him into the historical records as Pope Stephen II.

[00:05:06]But there was a huge glaring problem.

[00:05:08]The guy who succeeded him the very next day in 752 had also chosen the name Stephen and he had already been recorded as Stephen II. So, suddenly the real Stephen II had to be bumped up to Stephen which meant the old Stephen became Stephen All the way down the line until Stephen X became Stephen X. It literally ruined the numbering system for every single subsequent Pope named Stephen for over a millennium. It wasn't until the 1961 edition of the Annuario Pontificio that the Vatican finally just threw up their hands, removed our three-day Stephen from the list entirely, and shifted everyone's numbers back down.

[00:05:35]And the craziest part? Fixing Stephen's numbering wasn't some isolated event.

[00:05:40]This historical ledger requires constant maintenance. As recently as 2001, the Vatican released an edition of their yearbook that contained almost 200 corrections to the existing biographies of the Popes. We're talking edits stretching all the way from St. Peter to John Paul II. Even in the 21st century, they were still adjusting birthplaces, fixing dates from the first two centuries, and correcting family names.

[00:06:04]Section four, a living historical record, the fluidity of history.

[00:06:10]So, what does this highly specific, incredibly bureaucratic anomaly actually teach us? Let's zoom back out to the macro perspective. So, the crucial point is that history is absolutely not static. It is an active, ongoing process of revision and bureaucratic updating.

[00:06:25]As we've seen throughout this explainer, canon laws evolve over time, completely changing the historical status of past figures. Rival claimants are demoted and removed, timeline shifts due to massive calendar adjustments, and deeply established regnal numbers are completely rewritten centuries after the fact just to make this spreadsheet work.

[00:06:42]It really makes you look at every timeline a little differently, doesn't it? If an unbroken 2,000-year-old institution meticulously tracking a single, highly visible line of succession can have this many glitches, corrections, and rewritten numbers, it leaves us with a fascinating thought.

[00:06:57]How many other, quote-unquote, concrete historical facts out there are really just waiting for a bureaucratic update?

[00:07:03]Think about that the next time you read a history book. Thank you so much for joining me on this explainer. Keep asking questions, and I'll catch you next time.