The document urges him to grant King Henry VIII an annulment of his first marriage. (When the pope wouldn't do so, Henry founded the Church of England, which did.) The 1654 deed of abdication of Sweden's Queen Christina, who left her Protestant nation's throne to join the church of Rome, is tied to over 300 round containers, many today empty of wax.
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Cardinal Bergoglio certainly preferred life in the local Church to the bureaucracy of Rome's administrative body - the Curia, which is widely perceived as plagued with management issues and in need of reform.
An exhibition at Lugano traced the development of his early career from his initial apprenticeship as a stone-cutter with the builders of the Duomo in Milan to his first important commission in Rome: the church and monastery of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, located at the crossroads of the Four Fountains in today's Via Quirinale.
"Even in their numbers they are not reflective of the Church, " she says of the 115 cardinals gathered in Rome.
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To the faithful, St Peter - the disciple and first pope - started the official church in Rome at the conclusion of his journey after Christ's Ascension.
Elisa Claps' decomposed body was found in 2010 in the loft of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Potenza, about 225 miles south of Rome, in the region of Basilicata.
The 1841 Martyrs' Memorial was built as a rebuke and warning to Oxford theologians such as John Henry Newman, as they questioned the legitimacy of the Church of England's split from Rome.
The Tuscan countryside has a rich cultural and artistic heritage, crisscrossed with vineyards producing delicious Chianti, Brunello di Montalcino and super Tuscans, and anchored by classic vistas of olive and cypress trees framing red-tiled church roofs, all within easy reach of Florence and Rome.
Interviews in Rome with dozens of church officials, Vatican insiders and foreign government officials close to the church, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, mapped out that hermetic universe.
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The Holy See is the supreme government of the Roman Catholic Church, which operates from the independent territory of the Vatican City State in Rome.
About half the cardinal-electors (60) are European - 21 of them Italian - and many have worked for the administrative body of the Church, the Curia, in Rome.
That gives him clout with those seeking to reform the nerve center of the church that has been discredited by revelations of leaks and complaints from cardinals in the field that Rome is inefficient and unresponsive to their needs.
Like Mr Stourton, Montalbano hoped that the days of an authoritarian, Rome-dominated church were coming to an end.
Still, the former pope chose the New York archbishop for the honor of delivering a speech to other church leaders in Rome.
And it used this network to great effect for what became its biggest client: the Vatican, to which it brought the tithes and taxes due to Rome from other branches of the church commercial in Europe.
He does not foresee legal battles over church buildings if groups of Anglicans do decide to convert to Rome in large numbers.
In the days leading up to the conclave, more than 150 cardinals, some of whom won't participate in the election because they are older than the 80-year-old voting cutoff, gathered in Rome to discuss the state of the church.
Martina of Rome, that Pope Urban had built a church in her honor and had composed the hymns used in her office in the Roman Breviary, that she perished by the sword.
But it is discovering the staircase down to the next layer of history that makes this Rome's most extraordinary church.
The two-hour-long, early evening installation ceremony was a significant one for the church, since a pope is pontiff because he is elected bishop of Rome, and not vice versa.
Built in 124 A.D. as a temple to all the gods of Rome, the Pantheon remains today as a Catholic church and a tomb for Italian luminaries, such as the artist Raphael and King Vittorio Emmanuelle II.
The Orthodox Church split with Rome 10 centuries ago and then the Protestants followed in the time of the Reformation in the 16th century.
Visitors to Rome can still see some of the dungeons into which prisoners of the Church used to be thrown.
Under church law they are obliged to visit Rome to report to the Pope on the state of their dioceses in what is called an "ad limina" (on the threshold of Saint Peter) visit.
The Orthodox church broke off some 1, 000 years ago from Rome in part over disputes about the primacy of the pontiff.
After a substantial donation, the mobster had been buried in one of Rome's most storied basilicas -- in itself, a serious embarrassment for the church.
Andrews and Edinburgh last Sunday, he said he expected to take part as the College of Cardinals gathers in Rome to pick a successor to Benedict, who has led the worldwide church since 2005.
Recently, all eyes have been on the city of Rome while the Papal Conclave convened to elect Pope Francis 1 the new leader of the Catholic Church.
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In fact, I was in Rome a couple of months ago and saw a debate between two priests over this, and the church has not decided which way to go.
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