Our pope this week was startlingly good for a Renaissance pontiff – he didn’t use his power to elevate all of his greedy nephews, he began as a monk and never really forgot it, and he worked so hard and so much that he could have coined the phrase “I can sleep when I’m dead.”

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This guy was an able pontiff who brought much-needed respect back to the papacy at its lowest point in history. And on the family front, he was a real diamond in the rough. A lone bright spot amidst a group of relatives that would make the Kardashians blush.

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This pope wasn’t long for this world once he made it to the Chair of St. Peter and was a compromise pick from the beginning, to boot. Apparently it had something to do with being just another pretty face, but history is silent on whether or not he was a ...barbarian.

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Our pope this week hit a lot of firsts – first Latin-writing pope, first African pope, and the first papal hothead. Good thing he had the humility to match it.

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Our pope this week voted in literally one million papal elections before it was finally his turn. At least it probably seemed like that to him. He was a child of the nobility who served the Church from an early age, but there was just one small thing left to do after he got elected as the new Bishop of Rome...

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Links:

• Pope Nicholas III - Wikipedia
• Pope Nicholas III - Catholic Encyclopedia
• Exiit qui seminat - Pope Nicholas III on the Franciscans
• Inferno 19 - Digital Dante (Dante depicting Pope Nicholas III in Hell)
• Top 10 Things To Know About the Vatican Gardens
• 1268–1271 papal election - Wikipedia
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• [NEW] Today in Papal History Daily Newsletter

He was one of the last solid pontiffs before perhaps the darkest time in the history of the papacy. He held off the Muslim Army as long as he could, spent way too long looking for new emperors, was a patron of one of the Church’s greatest evangelists, and sadly was the first Bishop of Rome in history to meet a certain kind of sordid end.

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• Pope John VIII - Wikipedia
• Pope John VIII - Catholic Encyclopedia
• [LETTER] Pope John VIII to Duke Branimir of Croatia
• List of popes who died violently - Wikipedia

Our pope this week was only in office a short time, but still managed to leave a mark that’s resounded through the ages in battling one of early Christianity’s most monumental heresies. He’s also one of just three pontiffs in history to have a name that starts with the letter Z.

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• Pope Zosimus - Wikipedia
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Our man this week was a mentor to one of the greatest popes to ever live, he spent far too much time trying to drum up an army from the emperor to protect Rome from destruction, and met his earthly end as a deadly disease swept brutally through late 6th-Century Rome.

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This week is an extra special a CROSSOVER episode with the excellent podcast The Quizzical Papist – Your “extraordinary form” bar trivia with Fr. Brad and Grace. If you’ve ever been to bar trivia – or if you can even remember what that’s like after the long winter of 2020, that’s the exact structure of their show and, as a result, this crossover.

Grace and Matt battled it out over two rounds – the first half you’ll find on The Quizzical Papist, so make sure you go over and start there. Our half of the show has the second round and final results of the great papist showdown.

FIRST HALF IN THE LINK BELOW!

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Our first episode of 2021 is a very special one indeed. This week we’re joined by JD Flynn & Ed Condon, co-founders of The Pillar, the brand new Catholic media project focused on smart, faithful, and serious journalism, from committed and informed Catholics who love the Church, which you can find and sign up for at pillarcatholic.com.

Special Guests: Ed Condon and JD Flynn.

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