Rome
Rome is the capital city and a special comune of Italy. Rome serves as the capital of the Lazio region. With 2,872,800 residents in 1,285 km2, it is the country's most populated comune, it is the fourth most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. It is the centre of the Metropolitan City of Rome, which has a population of 4,355,725 residents, thus making it the most populous metropolitan city in Italy. Rome is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio, along the shores of the Tiber; the Vatican City is an independent country inside the city boundaries of Rome, the only existing example of a country within a city: for this reason Rome has been defined as capital of two states. Rome's history spans 28 centuries. While Roman mythology dates the founding of Rome at around 753 BC, the site has been inhabited for much longer, making it one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Europe; the city's early population originated from a mix of Latins and Sabines.
The city successively became the capital of the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, is regarded by some as the first metropolis. It was first called The Eternal City by the Roman poet Tibullus in the 1st century BC, the expression was taken up by Ovid and Livy. Rome is called the "Caput Mundi". After the fall of the Western Empire, which marked the beginning of the Middle Ages, Rome fell under the political control of the Papacy, in the 8th century it became the capital of the Papal States, which lasted until 1870. Beginning with the Renaissance all the popes since Nicholas V pursued over four hundred years a coherent architectural and urban programme aimed at making the city the artistic and cultural centre of the world. In this way, Rome became first one of the major centres of the Italian Renaissance, the birthplace of both the Baroque style and Neoclassicism. Famous artists, painters and architects made Rome the centre of their activity, creating masterpieces throughout the city.
In 1871, Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, which, in 1946, became the Italian Republic. Rome has the status of a global city. In 2016, Rome ranked as the 14th-most-visited city in the world, 3rd most visited in the European Union, the most popular tourist attraction in Italy, its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The famous Vatican Museums are among the world's most visited museums while the Colosseum was the most popular tourist attraction in world with 7.4 million visitors in 2018. Host city for the 1960 Summer Olympics, Rome is the seat of several specialized agencies of the United Nations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Programme and the International Fund for Agricultural Development; the city hosts the Secretariat of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean as well as the headquarters of many international business companies such as Eni, Enel, TIM, Leonardo S.p. A. and national and international banks such as Unicredit and BNL.
Its business district, called EUR, is the base of many companies involved in the oil industry, the pharmaceutical industry, financial services. Rome is an important fashion and design centre thanks to renowned international brands centered in the city. Rome's Cinecittà Studios have been the set of many Academy Award–winning movies. According to the founding myth of the city by the Ancient Romans themselves, the long-held tradition of the origin of the name Roma is believed to have come from the city's founder and first king, Romulus. However, it is a possibility that the name Romulus was derived from Rome itself; as early as the 4th century, there have been alternative theories proposed on the origin of the name Roma. Several hypotheses have been advanced focusing on its linguistic roots which however remain uncertain: from Rumon or Rumen, archaic name of the Tiber, which in turn has the same root as the Greek verb ῥέω and the Latin verb ruo, which both mean "flow". There is archaeological evidence of human occupation of the Rome area from 14,000 years ago, but the dense layer of much younger debris obscures Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites.
Evidence of stone tools and stone weapons attest to about 10,000 years of human presence. Several excavations support the view that Rome grew from pastoral settlements on the Palatine Hill built above the area of the future Roman Forum. Between the end of the bronze age and the beginning of the Iron age, each hill between the sea and the Capitol was topped by a village. However, none of them had yet an urban quality. Nowadays, there is a wide consensus that the city developed through the aggregation of several villages around the largest one, placed above the Palatine; this aggregation was facilitated by the increase of agricultural productivity above the subsistence level, which allowed the establishment of secondary and tertiary activities. These in turn boosted the development of trade with the Greek colonies of southern Italy; these developments, which according to archaeological ev
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to proselytize or perform ministries of service, such as education, social justice, health care, economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin missionem, meaning "act of sending" or mittere, meaning "to send"; the word was used in light of its biblical usage. The term is most used for Christian missions, but can be used for any creed or ideology. A Christian missionary can be defined as "one, to witness across cultures"; the Lausanne Congress of 1974, defined the term, related to Christian mission as, "to form a viable indigenous church-planting movement". Missionaries can be found in many countries around the world. In the Bible, Jesus is recorded as instructing the apostles to make disciples of all nations; this verse is referred to by Christian missionaries as the Great Commission and inspires missionary work. The Christian Church expanded throughout the Roman Empire in New Testament times and is said by tradition to have reached further, to Persia and to India.
During the Middle Ages, the Christian monasteries and missionaries such as Saint Patrick, Adalbert of Prague propagated learning and religion beyond the European boundaries of the old Roman Empire. In 596, Pope Gregory the Great sent the Gregorian Mission into England. In their turn, Christians from Ireland and from Britain became prominent in converting the inhabitants of central Europe. During the Age of Discovery, the Catholic Church established a number of missions in the Americas and in other Western colonies through the Augustinians and Dominicans to spread Christianity in the New World and to convert the Native Americans and other indigenous people. About the same time, missionaries such as Francis Xavier as well as other Jesuits, Augustinians and Dominicans reached Asia and the Far East, the Portuguese sent missions into Africa. Emblematic in many respects is Matteo Ricci's Jesuit mission to China from 1582, peaceful and non-violent; these missionary movements should be distinguished from others, such as the Baltic Crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries, which were arguably compromised in their motivation by designs of military conquest.
Much contemporary Catholic missionary work has undergone profound change since the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965, with an increased push for indigenization and inculturation, along with social justice issues as a constitutive part of preaching the Gospel. As the Catholic Church organizes itself along territorial lines and had the human and material resources, religious orders, some specializing in it, undertook most missionary work in the era after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West. Over time, the Holy See established a normalized Church structure in the mission areas starting with special jurisdictions known as apostolic prefectures and apostolic vicariates. At a stage of development these foundations are raised to regular diocesan status with a local bishops appointed. On a global front, these processes were accelerated in the 1960s, in part accompanying political decolonization. In some regions, they are still in course. Just as the Bishop of Rome had jurisdiction in territories considered to be in the Eastern sphere, so the missionary efforts of the two 9th-century saints Cyril and Methodius were conducted in relation to the West rather than the East, though the field of activity was central Europe.
The Eastern Orthodox Church, under the Orthodox Church of Constantinople undertook vigorous missionary work under the Roman Empire and its successor the Byzantine Empire. This had lasting effects and in some sense is at the origin of the present relations of Constantinople with some sixteen Orthodox national churches including the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Georgian Orthodox and Apostolic Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church; the Byzantines expanded their missionary work in Ukraine after the mass baptism in Kiev in 988. The Serbian Orthodox Church had its origins in the conversion by Byzantine missionaries of the Serb tribes when they arrived in the Balkans in the 7th century. Orthodox missionaries worked among the Estonians from the 10th to the 12th centuries, founding the Estonian Orthodox Church. Under the Russian Empire of the 19th century, missionaries such as Nicholas Ilminsky moved into the subject lands and propagated Orthodoxy, including through Belarus, Moldova, Estonia and China.
The Russian St. Nicholas of Japan took Eastern Orthodoxy to Japan in the 19th century; the Russian Orthodox Church sent missionaries to Alaska beginning in the 18th century, including Saint Herman of Alaska, to minister to the Native Americans. The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia continued missionary work outside Russia after the 1917 Russian Revolution, resulting in the establishment of many new dioceses in the diaspora, from which numerous converts have been made in Eastern Europe, North America, Oceania. Early Protestant missionaries included John Eliot and contemporary ministers
Pope Urban VIII
Pope Urban VIII reigned as Pope from 6 August 1623 to his death in 1644. He expanded the papal territory by force of arms and advantageous politicking, was a prominent patron of the arts and a reformer of Church missions. However, the massive debts incurred during his pontificate weakened his successors, who were unable to maintain the papacy's longstanding political and military influence in Europe, he was involved in a controversy with Galileo and his theory on heliocentrism. He was born Maffeo Barberini in April 1568 to Antonio Barberini, a Florentine nobleman, Camilla Barbadoro, his father died when he was only three years old and his mother took him to Rome, where he was put in the charge of his uncle, Francesco Barberini, an apostolic protonotary. At the age of 16 he became his uncle's heir, he was educated by the Society of Jesus, received a doctorate of law from the University of Pisa in 1589. In 1601, through the influence of his uncle, was able to secure from Pope Clement VIII appointment as a papal legate to the court of King Henry IV of France.
In 1604, the same pope appointed him as the Archbishop of Nazareth, an office joined with that of Bishop of the suppressed Dioceses of Canne and Monteverde, with his residence at Barletta. At the death of his uncle, he inherited his riches, with which he bought a palace in Rome which he made into a luxurious Renaissance residence. Pope Paul V later employed Barberini in a similar capacity, afterwards raising him, in 1606, to the order of the Cardinal-Priest, with the titular church of San Pietro in Montorio and appointing him as a papal legate of Bologna. Barberini was considered someone who could be elected as pope, though there were those such as Cardinal Ottavio Bandini who worked to prevent Barberini from being elected as pope. Despite this, throughout 29-30 July, the cardinals began an intense series of negotiations to test the numbers as to who could emerge from the conclave as pope, with Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi dismissing Barberini's chances as long as Barberini remained a close ally of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, whose faction Barberini supported.
Ludovisi had discussions with Cardinals Farnese and Aldobrandini on 30 July about seeing to Barberini's election. The three supported his candidature and went about securing the support of others, which lead to Barberini's election just over a week later. On 6 August 1623, at the papal conclave following the death of Pope Gregory XV, Barberini was chosen as Gregory XV's successor and took the name Urban VIII. Upon Pope Urban VIII's election, the Venetian envoy, wrote the following description of him: The new Pontiff is 56 years old, his Holiness is tall, with regular features and black hair turning grey. He is exceptionally elegant and refined in all details of his dress, he is an excellent speaker and debater, writes verses and patronises poets and men of letters. Urban VIII's papacy covered 21 years of the Thirty Years' War, was an eventful one by the standards of the day, he canonized Elizabeth of Portugal, Andrew Corsini and Conrad of Piacenza, issued the papal bulls of canonization for Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier, canonized by his predecessor, Pope Gregory XV.
Despite an early friendship and encouragement for his teachings, Urban VIII was responsible for summoning the scientist and astronomer Galileo to Rome in 1633 to recant his work. Urban VIII practiced nepotism on a grand scale, he elevated his brother Antonio Marcello Barberini and his nephews Francesco Barberini and Antonio Barberini to Cardinal. He bestowed upon their brother, Taddeo Barberini, the titles Prince of Palestrina, Gonfalonier of the Church, Prefect of Rome and Commander of Sant'Angelo. Historian Leopold von Ranke estimated that during his reign, Urban VIII's immediate family amassed 105 million scudi in personal wealth. Urban VIII was a skilled writer of Latin verse, a collection of Scriptural paraphrases as well as original hymns of his composition have been reprinted; the 1638 papal bull Commissum Nobis protected the existence of Jesuit missions in South America by forbidding the enslavement of natives who were at the Jesuit Reductions. At the same time, Urban VIII repealed the Jesuit monopoly on missionary work in China and Japan, opening these countries to missionaries of other orders and missionary societies.
Urban VIII issued a 1624 papal bull that made the use of tobacco in holy places punishable by excommunication. Urban VIII canonized five saints during his pontificate: Stephen Harding, Elizabeth of Portugal and Conrad of Piacenza, Peter Nolasco, Andrea Corsini; the pope beatified 68 individuals including the Martyrs of Nagasaki. The pope created 74 cardinals in eight consistories throughout his pontificate, this included his nephews Francesco and Antonio, cousin Lorenzo Magalotti, the pope's own brother Antonio Marcello, he created Giovanni Battista Pamphili as a cardinal, with Pamphili becoming his immediate successor Pope Innocent X. The pope created eight of those cardinals whom he had reserved in pectore. Urban VIII's military involvement was aimed less at the restoration of Catholicism in Europe than at adjusting the balance of power to favour his own independence in Italy. In 1626, the duchy of Urbino was incorporated into the papal dominions, and, in 1627
Pope Paul III
Pope Paul III, born Alessandro Farnese, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 13 October 1534 to his death in 1549. He came to the papal throne in an era following the sack of Rome in 1527 and rife with uncertainties in the Catholic Church following the Protestant Reformation. During his pontificate, in the spirit of the Counter-Reformation, new Catholic religious orders and societies, such as the Jesuits, the Barnabites, the Congregation of the Oratory, attracted a popular following, he convened the Council of Trent in 1545. He was a significant patron of the arts and employed nepotism to advance the power and fortunes of his family, it is to Pope Paul III. Born in 1468 at Canino, Alessandro Farnese was the oldest son of Pier Luigi I Farnese, Signore di Montalto and his wife Giovanna Caetani, a member of the Caetani family which had produced Pope Boniface VIII; the Farnese family had prospered over the centuries but it was Alessandro’s ascendency to the papacy and his dedication to family interests which brought about the most significant increase in the family’s wealth and power.
Alessandro's humanist education was at the court of Lorenzo de' Medici. Trained as an apostolic notary, he joined the Roman Curia in 1491 and in 1493 Pope Alexander VI appointed him Cardinal-Deacon of Santi Cosma e Damiano. Farnese’s sister, Giulia was reputedly a mistress of Alexander VI and might have been instrumental in securing this appointment for her brother. For this reason, he was sometimes mockingly referred to as the "Borgia brother-in-law," just as Giulia was mocked as "the Bride of Christ." More disparagingly he was referred to as "Cardinal Fregnese". As Bishop of Parma, he came under the influence of his vicar-general, Bartolomeo Guidiccioni; this led to the future pope breaking off the relationship with his mistress and committing himself to reform in his Parma diocese. Under Pope Clement VII he became Cardinal Bishop of Ostia and Dean of the College of Cardinals, on the death of Clement VII in 1534, was elected as Pope Paul III; as a young cleric, Alessandro lived a notably dissolute life, taking for himself a mistress and having three sons and two daughters with her.
By Silvia Ruffini, he fathered Pier Luigi Farnese. The elevation to the cardinalate of his grandsons, Alessandro Farnese, aged fourteen, Guido Ascanio Sforza, aged sixteen, displeased the reform party and drew a protest from the emperor, but this was forgiven when, shortly after, he introduced into the Sacred College Reginald Pole, Gasparo Contarini, Jacopo Sadoleto, Giovanni Pietro Caraffa, who became Pope Paul IV; the fourth pope during the period of the Protestant Reformation, Paul III became the first to take active reform measures in response to Protestantism. Soon after his elevation, 2 June 1536, Paul III summoned a general council to meet at Mantua in the following May. Paul III first deferred for a year and discarded the whole project. In 1536, Paul III invited nine eminent prelates, distinguished by learning and piety alike, to act in committee and to report on the reformation and rebuilding of the Church. In 1537 they turned in their celebrated Consilium de emendenda ecclesia, exposing gross abuses in the Curia, in the church administration and public worship.
This report was printed not only at Strasbourg and elsewhere. But to the Protestants it seemed far from thorough, yet the Pope was in earnest. He perceived that Emperor Charles V would not rest until the problems were grappled with in earnest, a council was an unequivocal procedure that should leave no room for doubt of his own readiness to make changes, yet it is clear that the Concilium bore no fruit in the actual situation, that in Rome no results followed from the committee's recommendations. As a consequence of the extensive campaign against "idolatry" in England, culminating with the dismantling of the shrine of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury, the Pope excommunicated Henry VIII on 17 December 1538 and issued an interdict. On the other hand, serious political complications resulted. In order to vest his grandson Ottavio Farnese with the dukedom of Camerino, Paul forcibly wrested the same from the duke of Urbino, he incurred virtual war with his own subjects and vassals by the imposition of burdensome taxes.
Perugia, renouncing its obedience, was besieged by Paul's son, Pier Luigi, forfeited its freedom on its surrender. The burghers of Colonna were duly vanquished, Ascanio was banished. After this the time seemed ripe for annihilating heresy. In 1540, the Church recognized the new society forming about Ignatius of Loyola, which became the Society of Jesus; the second visible stage in the process becomes marked by the institution, or reorganization, in 1542, of the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. On another side, the Emperor was insisting that Rome should forward his designs towards a peaceable recovery of the German Protestants. Accordingly, the Pope despatched Giovanni Morone (not yet a cardi
Pope Pius IX
Pope Pius IX, born Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, was head of the Catholic Church from 16 June 1846 to his death on 7 February 1878. He was the longest-reigning elected pope in the history of the Catholic Church, serving for over 31 years. During his pontificate, Pius IX convened the First Vatican Council, which decreed papal infallibility, but the council was cut short owing to the loss of the Papal States. Europe, including the Italian peninsula, was in the midst of considerable political ferment when the bishop of Imola, Giovanni Maria Cardinal Mastai-Ferretti, was elected pope, he took the name Pius, after his generous patron and the long-suffering prisoner of Napoleon, Pius VII. He had been elected by the faction of cardinals sympathetic to the political liberalization coursing across Europe, his initial governance of the Papal States gives evidence of his own moderate sympathies. A series of terrorist acts sponsored by Italian liberals and nationalists, which included the assassination of his Minister of the Interior, Pellegrino Rossi, which forced Pius himself to flee Rome in 1848, along with widespread revolutions in Europe, led to his growing skepticism towards the liberal, nationalist agenda.
Through the 1850s and 1860s, Italian nationalists made military gains against the Papal States, which culminated in the seizure of the city of Rome in 1870 and the dissolution of the Papal States. Thereafter, Pius IX refused to accept the Law of Guarantees from the Italian government, which would have made the Holy See dependent on legislation that the Italian parliament could modify at any time. Pius refused to leave Vatican City, declaring himself a "prisoner of the Vatican", his ecclesiastical policies towards other countries, such as Russia, Germany or France, were not always successful, owing in part to changing secular institutions and internal developments within these countries. However, concordats were concluded with numerous states such as Austria-Hungary, Spain, Tuscany, Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti. Pius was a Marian pope. In 1854, he promulgated the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, articulating a long-held Catholic belief that Mary, the Mother of God, was conceived without original sin.
He conferred the title Our Mother of Perpetual Help on a famous Byzantine icon from Crete entrusted to the Redemptorists. In 1862, he convened 300 bishops to the Vatican for the canonization of Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan, his 1864 Syllabus of Errors stands as a strong condemnation against liberalism, moral relativism and separation of church and state. Pius definitively reaffirmed Catholic teaching in favor of the establishment of the Catholic faith as the state religion in nations where the majority of the population is Catholic. However, his most important legacy is the First Vatican Council, convened in 1869, which defined the dogma of papal infallibility, but was interrupted as Italian nationalist troops threatened Rome; the council is considered to have contributed to a centralization of the church in the Vatican, while clearly defining the Pope's doctrinal authority. Many recent ecclesiastical historians and journalists question his approaches, his appeal for public worldwide support of the Holy See after he became "the prisoner of the Vatican" resulted in the revival and spread to the whole Catholic Church of Peter's Pence, used today to enable the Pope "to respond to those who are suffering as a result of war, natural disaster, disease".
After his death in 1878, his canonization process was opened on 11 February 1907 by Pope Pius X, it drew considerable controversy over the years. It was closed on several occasions during the pontificates of Pope Benedict XV and Pope Pius XI. Pope Pius XII re-opened the cause on 7 December 1954, Pope John Paul II proclaimed him Venerable on 6 July 1985, he was beatified on 3 September 2000 after the recognition of a miracle. Pius IX was assigned the liturgical feast day of the date of his death. Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti was born on 13 May 1792 in Senigallia, he was the ninth child born into the noble family of Girolamo dei conti Ferretti, was baptized on the same day of his birth with the name of Giovanni Maria Giambattista Pietro Pellegrino Isidoro. He was educated in Rome; as a young man in the Guardia Nobile the young Count Mastai was engaged to be married to an Irishwoman, Miss Foster, arrangements were made for the wedding to take place in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi. Mastai's parents opposed the marriage and, in the event, he did not appear at the church on the appointed day.
As a theology student in his hometown Sinigaglia, in 1814 he met Pope Pius VII, who had returned from French captivity. In 1815, he was soon dismissed after an epileptic seizure, he threw himself at the feet of Pius VII, who elevated him and supported his continued theological studies. The pope insisted that another priest should assist Mastai during Holy Mass, a stipulation, rescinded, after the seizure attacks became less frequent. Mastai was ordained a priest on 10 April 1819, he worked as the rector of the Tata Giovanni Institute in Rome. Shortly before his death, Pius VII sent him as Auditor to Chile and Peru in 1823 and 1825 to assist the Apostolic Nuncio, Monsignore Giovanni Muzi and Monsignore Bradley Kane, in the first mission to post-revolutionary South America; the mission had the o
Iglesia de San Pedro Claver, Cartagena
The Iglesia de San Pedro Claver is a church located in Cartagena de Indias, in Colombia. This church and its convent are located in the Plaza de San Pedro Claver; the church is part of a set of religious buildings, complemented by the Cloister of San Pedro Claver and the archaeological museum. It was built under the parameters of colonial constructions. Known as the church of San Juan de Dios, it has been called the church of San Ignacio de Loyola since 1622 and is now known as San Pedro Claver. At its altar lie the remains of Saint Peter Claver, who died in 1654 in Cartagena, after devoting all his life to evangelizing and redeeming the black slaves of New Granada, it suffered many vicissitudes after the expulsion of the Jesuits, first ordered by Charles III of Spain in 1767, in the years 1850 and 1861, during the early years of the republican era. For many years it served as a park to the adjacent barracks, which occupied part of the house-school of the Company of Jesus, its architecture corresponds to the style called "Jesuitic", of type denominated "of preaching".
Much of the façade was carved in stone from the island of Tierrabomba, inside, at the bottom of the marble main altar imported from Italy by Bishop Eugenio Biffi, lie the relics of the owner in a golden bronze and glass urn, gift of Pope Leo XIII. In 1921 the typical orange half was eliminated and the present dome, the work of Lelarge, was erected; the front of the church departs from the Baroque style of other entrances. There is a second floor above the chapels, which are intercommunicated through arches of half point and covered with arista vaults; this church has an organ and a choir similar to those of the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran in Rome; the interior of the church of the Company is distinguished by the severity of its architectural elements, in contrast to the Baroque profusion used by Jesuits in other parts of Spanish America. Its facade is considered as the richest and most monumental of Cartagena
