Popes

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. More than one head of the Roman Catholic Church, each overseeing the church's religious and administrative affairs
2. Multiple supreme leaders of the Catholic Church recognized historically or currently for spiritual authority
3. Several chief bishops in Catholicism who serve as the spiritual leaders of the worldwide church

Etymology: The Catholic leader in Rome and the word for a father share a common ancestor, and it is a baby's syllable. Ancient Greek "páppas" meant "papa" or "daddy," and by late antiquity "pápas" had come to mean a spiritual father. That title was applied to priests and bishops across the Greek-speaking church, and by the 3rd century it was used especially for the bishop of Alexandria. Through Vulgar Latin "papa," it reached Old English as "pāpa," and in Middle English the spelling settled into "pope." By the 8th century, in Western usage, the title had narrowed to the bishop of Rome alone, which is the sense we now use. The same Greek root also produced "pope" in a different sense: Old Church Slavonic "popŭ," meaning a priest, passed into Russian as "поп" (pop), the ordinary word for an Orthodox parish priest. The Russian and English words are therefore cousins despite their very different modern lives.

Synonyms: pontiffs, bishops