[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
male narrator: One of the most powerful men on earth
holds a position that has existed
for nearly 2,000 years.
♪ ♪
As the world changes and faith evolves,
his authority remains.
What began with one apostle
has become 1.2 billion followers
under one man.
He is the head of the Catholic Church,
the Pope,
and this is his path to power.
♪ ♪
In this episode,
never before seen artifacts
from the earliest days of Christianity
show how a small group of rebels
turned an illegal movement
into the largest religion on the planet,
and how, against all odds... [crowd screaming]
The papacy endures.
♪ ♪
[bell tolling]
[men singing in Latin]
♪ ♪
- This is something that has never happened before.
The Vatican, this morning, publicly displayed
what's believed to be bone fragments from St. Peter,
an apostle of Jesus Christ, and the world's first pope.
♪ ♪
narrator: Pope Francis is the 266th leader
of the Catholic Church.
For the last 2,000 years,
despite an ever-changing world,
Catholic's have looked to the Pope
as a beacon of faith, morality,
and divine guidance.
But who is this figure that means so much to so many?
And how did he come to be
one of the most powerful men on Earth?
[suspenseful music] [bell tolling]
- People look to the Pope to have something to say
on almost everything.
[crowd cheering]
- I don't think there's any other religious figure
that people recognize as much as they recognize the Pope.
♪ ♪
narrator: But before the Pope had the ear
of 1.2 billion followers worldwide...
♪ ♪
He was a philosopher,
a leader of an underground movement,
and an outlaw.
♪ ♪
- Peter was one of the 12 apostles.
[dramatic music]
He's walked with Jesus, essentially.
So he's an important figure for that reason alone.
- In the Gospels,
when the apostles go fishing in Galilee,
Peter is told, "You are Peter,"
which means "rock"...
♪ ♪
"And on his rock, I will build my church,
and I will give to you the keys
of the kingdom of heaven."
- Peter himself, as the one who voiced the confession,
becomes a symbol of the unwavering faith
that Jesus is the Son of God,
which is then the center of the Christian Church.
narrator: Though the word "Pope"
is not used for hundreds of years,
the foundation of the sacred office
is entwined in Peter's legacy.
- The Popes are, if you like,
the inheritors of the apostolic generation.
- It's this idea of the papacy being the rock,
a source of permanence in an age of anxiety,
that people know is steady.
♪ ♪
narrator: Peter preaches that Jesus Christ died
for the sins of man,
and accepting that truth is the key to salvation.
Others teach different variations of that message.
But regardless of interpretation,
in the first century, any follower of Christ
is seen as a threat to the Roman Empire
and hunted for his beliefs.
[indistinct shouting]
- When you think about the beginning
of the Christian movement, it's astonishing
that this movement went anywhere.
People are being arrested, they're being tortured,
they're being killed in public.
You see competition between different disciples,
different versions of the message of Jesus.
♪ ♪
narrator: All of Christ's followers spread
throughout the Mediterranean preaching his message,
but they apostles are the men on earth
who actually walked with Jesus himself.
- There were all of these cities
that had healthy Christian churches in them,
but the only one that actually had an apostle at its head
was the church in Rome,
which was where Peter was centered.
♪ ♪
- Rome is a giant empire.
If you're a Christian and you're saying that
you believe in a man, Jesus,
who is a king above all kings and not the Roman king,
you are putting yourself
in opposition to the Roman Empire.
And that becomes a really dangerous situation
for early Christians.
narrator: Despite the dangers facing Christians in Rome,
Peter holds secret gatherings
where he preaches the word of Christ.
- Rome is a society which is 75% to 80% slaves.
Slaves are not human, they can't marry,
they can be bought and sold, they can be whipped and raped.
♪ ♪
So, suddenly, there's this movement that's saying
"You're a person with dignity
"who's created in the image of God,
and that makes you worthwhile."
So that's part of the power of this Christian movement.
♪ ♪
narrator: Christ's message strikes a chord
with the most downtrodden members of Roman society,
and Peter's meetings become more and more popular.
♪ ♪
Inevitably, he catches the eye
of one of the cruelest and most sadistic rulers
in Roman history,
Emperor Nero.
[suspenseful music]
In the summer of 64 A.D.,
a raging fire burns Rome for six days,
destroying 2/3 of the city.
- People say that Emperor Nero started the fire
so he could advance his own building projects.
♪ ♪
- Some of Rome needed to catch on fire
so that he could build the kinds of temples
and things that he wanted to honor himself.
♪ ♪
narrator: Rumors that Nero started the fire himself
begin to fly,
and he needs a scapegoat.
- People are already asking a lot of questions
about his sanity,
his capacity to rule, and so on.
He looks around for a bunch of people
that other people don't like...
- And the most convenient people to blame it on
were the Christians.
- Nero says, "These are the people
who are--they're the problem."
They're the ones who set the place on fire.
Let's do terrible things to them.
[indistinct shouting]
♪ ♪
narrator: Nero orders his soldiers to round up
as many Christians as they can find.
- Nero had them hung to poles
and burned alive in his gardens.
- He had some of them torn up by wild animals.
♪ ♪
narrator: It isn't long before Peter
is swept up in the raids.
♪ ♪
He is convicted of insurrection
and sentenced to die on the cross.
[dramatic music]
- He is crucified upside down,
which is a really horrible way to die.
He says that he does not want to die
the same way that his Lord and Savior dies.
He wants to die upside down
because he's not worthy do die
in the same way that Jesus dies.
♪ ♪
narrator: Peter's death is a devastating loss
to the early Christian community.
♪ ♪
But dying in the name of his God makes him a martyr
and secures his legacy as the first true leader
of the church that will one day become
the most powerful force on the planet.
History names Peter,
the first Pope.
[dramatic music]
male narrator: After Peter's violent death,
Christians realized they must organize their movement
if they have any hope of survival
in the face of Roman tyranny.
♪ ♪
- They thought, rather like the American revolutionaries,
as one of them said, "We all have to hang together
or we shall surely all hang separately."
- They created an agreement with a set of rules.
♪ ♪
narrator: Deep within the private library
of the Greek Patriarch in Jerusalem lives
the 2,000-year-old document that outlines
the first cohesive guidelines of Christianity.
It's called the "Didache."
♪ ♪
narrator: This sacred text was lost until 1883
when a Greek translation from the 11th century was found.
Out of fear of theft or desecration,
it has never before been seen on camera
until now.
♪ ♪
- You don't have a Bible back then.
How do you transmit the faith?
How do you tell them how to behave?
How do you tell them what to do in a service?
The "Didache" does all of that for you.
narrator: But outlining the rules is only the first step.
Christians also need an infrastructure
to enforce those behaviors.
♪ ♪
- We tend to think about Christianity
as being all these basilicas around the world,
but before that, what you had were basically house churches.
And if you had a series of small house churches,
you needed somebody to be over that.
- Christians were trying to set up an organized community
so that people would recognize
who the members of that church were.
A kind of hierarchy sort of modeled on the Roman army.
- "Bishop of" means the most senior churchman
in that particular city.
♪ ♪
narrator: Because Rome is the capital
and the center of the empire,
the Bishop of Rome becomes the leader of the other bishops,
a position that will eventually become known
as Pope.
♪ ♪
In the 200 years after Peter's crucifixion,
bishops and their followers continue to be persecuted
and executed by Roman emperors...
until an unlikely hero emerges.
♪ ♪
- Constantine was a great military commander,
and when it was his turn to become a junior emperor,
he decided to fight his competition.
narrator: Constantine, the pagan commander
of Rome's western army,
declares war on the commander of the east
to decide who will be sole emperor of Rome.
♪ ♪
On the day before the battle,
he has a startling vision.
- He looks up and he sees a sign of the cross.
♪ ♪
- And he thought it was a promise from Jesus
that he would win the battle.
[men shouting]
♪ ♪
narrator: Constantine does win the battle,
and the new emperor is forever changed by his vision.
♪ ♪
- He decides he's gonna be a Christian.
♪ ♪
narrator: One of his first official acts
as the first Christian Emperor of Rome
is to issue the Edict of Milan.
This not only makes Christianity legal,
but favored.
- This is the big one.
For the first time, a Roman emperor decided
to ally with the church.
That meant, the whole of the known world
was at the disposal of the church.
♪ ♪
narrator: As Constantine moves Christianity
from outlaw to exulted,
church and state become intertwined.
- Constantine saw in Christianity
a way of uniting the empire,
a new ideology
that would give everybody the same God,
the same moral values.
- Constantine, by legalizing Christianity,
opened up a space where the Bishop of Rome
could become a permanent fixture
on both the spiritual and the political scene.
- What Constantine did is take the bishops
who had been previously persecuted
and make them his agents.
He treated them like members of his administration.
So now he would take the Bishop of Egypt,
the Bishop of Jerusalem, and the Bishop of Athens,
and state power would go through them.
- Bishops become important people
in the local community.
If people have disputes with each other,
they are likely to go to a bishop get it sorted out.
- You had to go to him to get the food supply.
That made him enormously wealthy
and enormously influential.
narrator: Constantine gives Romans
a political and financial incentive
to convert to Christianity.
He gives Christians tax breaks
and makes churches tax exempt.
- Constantine is the reason why churches
are now in the U.S. tax free entities.
Constantine is the reason why
churches have this special status.
- From the time of Constantine,
the church had been the ally of the emperor
and the church became the ally of rulers
as rulers became Christian.
There was no feeling that there should be a separation
between church and state.
Church and state work together.
♪ ♪
narrator: To honor his newfound faith,
Constantine commissions spectacular building projects
in Christ's name throughout the empire.
♪ ♪
Among the most famous of them,
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
in Jerusalem.
- The Church of the Holy Sepulchre
is one of the holiest places in Christendom.
The slab on the floor is place
where they say Jesus was originally buried.
narrator: But almost as soon as Christians are free
from Roman persecution,
they begin fighting with each other.
[indistinct shouting]
- Biggest problem during this time was doctrine.
In some people's eyes, Jesus was born of a woman,
he can't be divine,
and there's big questions about whether--
is Jesus a human, is he divine, is he both?
- You would think, "Wow, this is kind of hair splitting
doctrinal difference here," but there w--
you know, some people were willing to kill you for that.
See? So...
Christians...
willing to kill other Christians
for those differences.
narrator: To unite the empire,
Constantine must gather his bishops
under one church
or risk having the Christian Empire he's built
come crashing down.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
male narrator: Under Constantine
and the Bishop of Rome,
Christianity has gone from an outlawed sect
to the ruling force of the Western world.
- Constantine was both the head of the state
and he was the head of the church.
He was still a Roman and in the old Roman religion
the emperor was also the chief priest.
Constantine definitely took that approach to his faith
rather than, you know, what we would now think of
as more of a separation of powers.
narrator: But despite Christianity's
new political advantage,
after centuries of being persecuted
for not believing in the Roman gods,
Christians are now killing each other
over disputes in church doctrine.
♪ ♪
- Constantine needed a way to bind this empire together.
He conquered it, but it was crumbling.
♪ ♪
- He was angry and said, "Look,
these things you're quarreling about are just trivial.
I stopped the persecutions, you should be grateful."
So he called a council to unify the church.
♪ ♪
- The Council of Nicaea is the first time you bring
all of the bishops together
and have them start to talk to each other.
narrator: The Council marks
the first meeting of senior church leaders.
The foundation of the Pope's college of cardinals today.
- The bishops were commissioned to write
what a Christian should believe.
- Constantine manages to get the bishops to agree
on one singular statement of faith
still used to unify Christians today,
the Nicene Creed.
- The Creed says, "We believe in Jesus Christ,
the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth,"
and the Council decides that Jesus is fully human
and fully divine.
- Constantine declared, "If you sign it,
"you're a Christian and you're part of us,
"and if you don't, you're excommunicated,
you're out. You'll probably go to hell."
So this became the battling cry
for Catholics throughout the world.
♪ ♪
narrator: With the church unified after Nicaea,
Constantine looks to further stabilize
the religious foundation of his empire.
♪ ♪
He establishes a second hub of church power in the East.
He names the new capital after himself,
and calls it Constantinople.
- There's a bit of back and forth
between Rome and Constantinople.
- The Christians in the East
tend to look at the Christians in the West
as just being barbarians.
They would say that the Catholics in the West
baptize their children in wolf saliva.
The westerners tend to look at the East
as being not strong, you know, of feat.
♪ ♪
narrator: The hierarchy of clergy
under bishops who reported to the Bishop of Rome
had been working well,
but now with Constantinople acting as a second capital,
there is a second bishop
who believes that he should be in charge.
- There were disputes between the Bishop of Rome,
the Bishop of Constantinople.
Each one saw himself as a very powerful leader,
and each one was...
competing with the others for authority.
narrator: Despite Constantine's best efforts
to unify his empire under one church,
the East and West remain at odds.
♪ ♪
Seven years after the Council of Nicaea,
Constantine dies...
♪ ♪
Leaving the church still divided
and Rome without a strong military leader.
♪ ♪
[men shouting]
For over 100 years following Constantine's death,
Rome is under attack
from pagan barbarians to the north.
♪ ♪
[men shouting]
After a series of invasions and bloody clashes,
the barbarians overthrow the last emperor of Rome.
♪ ♪
The Eternal City, once home to 2 million people,
is reduced to less than 30,000.
[soft dramatic music]
Once the political and spiritual
center of the empire,
Rome is now almost abandoned,
and stays that way for nearly 200 years.
♪ ♪
- Rome in the sixth century was
muddier and messier
and perhaps less efficiently governed
than it had been in the time of Constantine.
♪ ♪
- Rome is not a good place to live.
It's very dangerous,
the standard of living is very low.
- Rome is virtually gone,
the church's center was in Constantinople.
[dramatic music]
narrator: As Rome falls
and Constantinople flourishes,
much of the churches terminology becomes Greek
instead of Latin.
The Bishop of Rome begins to be referred to
with the Greek word for "father,"
Pappas, or "Pope."
♪ ♪
During this period of barbarian invasions,
there is no centralized government left in Rome.
The church is the only institution capable
of addressing the needs of its suffering community.
- This is a time when the Pope is not
just the head of the church, he's also the ruler of Rome.
- The people of Rome were enormously dependent
on the church as a state,
so not as a church that oversaw
the relationship between God and man,
but as a church that oversaw
food, water, safety.
[indistinct chatter]
narrator: But powerful pagan families
looking to control the fallen city
see an opportunity.
With no official means of protection,
the papacy is about to come under direct attack.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
[indistinct shouting]
male narrator: By 795,
pagan barbarian families have been battling
for control of Rome for almost two centuries,
and the papacy is all that stands in the way.
♪ ♪
- The Lombards are one of the barbarian invaders
of the Italian Peninsula.
They seek to conquer Rome
and take over the territory
that's being ruled by the papacy.
♪ ♪
narrator: During an Easter procession,
the Lombards viciously attack Pope Leo III.
- Their faction wrestles him to the ground
and cut off his tongue.
But he lives through it.
♪ ♪
narrator: Pope Leo III realizes
that he needs protection,
and with no army of his own,
he must make an alliance.
♪ ♪
He chooses the most powerful king in the Western Empire,
Charles the Great of France,
better known as Charlemagne.
♪ ♪
On Christmas Day in the year 800,
Pope Leo III calls Charlemagne to Rome
where he crowns him Holy Roman Emperor.
♪ ♪
- Charlemagne took on himself
the role of defender of the faith.
- The moment that Leo III crowns Charlemagne
is really important because what it does,
it puts the church back together
with the empire.
If you have the Pope crowning a king,
that means the Pope is giving that earthly king
temporal and divine power.
♪ ♪
narrator: Pope Leo III's decision
to crown Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor
marks the papacy's conscious pivot
away from the Eastern church.
- The relations between Rome and Eastern Christians
had not been good for a while.
[soft music]
- Charlemagne, in his view, he was now
the only legitimate Christian emperor left.
As he grew in power,
developed a very standoffish relationship
with the ruler of Constantinople.
- And that really is the start of the schism
between the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church.
[dramatic music]
narrator: In the two centuries after Charlemagne
and Pope Leo III unite Western Europe
under the papacy in Rome,
the Eastern part of the empire breaks off
and begins to call itself the Greek Orthodox Church
under the Patriarch in Constantinople.
- The word "Catholic" originally meant "universal."
Until the 11th century, there was just the one church.
It wasn't until a church at Constantinople
broke off from its allegiance to the Pope
that we begin to see references to the Roman Catholic Church
as no longer meaning "universal,"
but meaning the church centered at Rome.
♪ ♪
narrator: 200 years after the historic alliance
between Charlemagne and Pope Leo III,
Pope Urban II rules the Western empire
from Rome
and the Patriarch reigns over the East from Constantinople.
♪ ♪
Until Constantinople finds itself facing
an imminent threat.
♪ ♪
- Islam is the super power of the Medieval Period.
They are the wealthiest, the most sophisticated.
If I was betting at the time, I would have certainly bet
that Islam-- that the Islamic empires
were the wave of the future.
narrator: Muslim armies had been steadily making their way
through the Arabian Peninsula,
conquering new lands and uniting them under Islam.
They had long-since conquered Jerusalem,
and were headed for the next Christian stronghold.
♪ ♪
- Muslims had swept through
what we'd now say is modern Turkey,
and really getting fairly close to Constantinople itself.
- When you can almost see Muslims across the water,
it's time to find the Christians
who are left to help you.
♪ ♪
narrator: Emperor Alexios I of Constantinople
writes to Pope Urban II in Rome
pleading for aid against the Muslims.
♪ ♪
- Alexios is asking for a few hundred knights
to help him defend his city.
What he gets is something entirely different.
Urban II is in part responding
to an appeal from the Emperor Alexius
As the leader of the church,
he's looking to improve
the spiritual well-being of his people,
but he's also a politician.
♪ ♪
narrator: Seeing an opportunity
to unite Eastern and Western Christians,
and solidify his place as their leader,
Pope Urban II calls an emergency gathering
of clergy, knights, and townspeople.
- It was probably the most famous speech made
during the Middle Ages.
Urban told about the plight of Christians in the East
who had had their lands conquered,
horrible mutilations of nuns
and clergy and pilgrims
because of their faith,
and what Urban did was very clever.
Rather than just ask them to go and fight for the East,
he also asked them to go all the way to Jerusalem
to restore the lands that had been taken by Muslims.
- The response is amazing.
- Hold your ground! - People shout,
"Deus vult," "God wills it,"
and this is the moment that crusading begins.
They cross Western Europe.
♪ ♪
- Pope Urban was an example of a new kind of Pope.
Austere, powerful personality.
The papacy as a self-consciously rallying,
purifying,
inspiring force.
Calling on people
to do something extraordinary for God,
and it had enormous imaginative power.
♪ ♪
narrator: For the first time, the Pope,
a religious leader once at the mercy of barbarians
and dependent upon kings for protection,
raises an army and commands a war.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
male narrator: In 1094, the Eastern Church calls upon
the Pope and the West to help them fight off
the incoming Muslim armies.
Pope Urban II sees this
as an opportunity to reunite Christians
and restore the reign of the Roman Catholic Church.
[indistinct shouting]
- There's a tribal aspect to it.
That our tribe is being attacked.
Just as we still do today. You know, 9/11.
Someone attacks the United States,
people are lined up at induction centers
to go off and fight.
narrator: When he calls for the first Crusade,
Pope Urban II solidifies his role
as a world power.
The Pope is no longer just a spiritual guide,
but a commander at the helm of an army.
[horses clomping]
A zealous fleet of nearly 40,000
starts the long march east towards Jerusalem.
♪ ♪
- The Crusades were, first and foremost,
an act of piety.
The Crusades are the only case I know of in human history
in which you have thousands of warriors
marching thousands of miles
deep into enemy territory
for no good strategic reason.
♪ ♪
narrator: The warriors begin their crusade
through the Rhineland
in what will become modern-day Germany.
[men shouting]
♪ ♪
The destruction in the name of Christ is waged
against all non-believers in their path.
- One of the terrible things that this group does
is that they attack the Jews of the Rhineland.
- They decide that the Jews are the people
who are responsible for the killing of Christ
and that if they are going to act against
the enemies of the church,
they will do so at home before they do so abroad.
♪ ♪
narrator: The Rhineland massacres
are only the beginning of what will become
a century of religious warfare
at the command of the Pope.
♪ ♪
- Once the first Crusade gets into Asia Minor,
it's into Muslim-held territory.
[men shouting]
The Crusaders managed to capture the town of Nicaea...
♪ ♪
And then they fight a great battle against the Muslims,
and they capture Antioch.
narrator: Emboldened by their string of unlikely victories,
the Crusaders are now convinced beyond all doubt
that God is on their side.
As they prepare to deliver
the crown jewel of Christianity
back to their Pope.
Jerusalem.
♪ ♪
- Their Lord, Jesus Christ, had had his lands taken,
and it was the Crusaders responsibility, therefore,
as his servants, to come to his aid
to restore those lands.
[men shouting]
- The Crusaders were extremely violent.
♪ ♪
They would attack people in their homes.
There were mass rapes, killing of children.
They would set fire to entire residential neighborhoods.
It was horrible.
♪ ♪
- They succeeded in liberating the city of Jerusalem
from the hands of the Muslims.
♪ ♪
And this, for generations,
will be hailed and recognized.
♪ ♪
narrator: After 400 years as a Muslim temple,
the Crusaders replaced the crescent
atop the sacred Dome of the Rock
with a cross and turn it into a church.
- Partly motivated by religious zeal,
partly motivated by simple desire for conquest.
The Crusaders were exclusionary.
Muslims were not allowed to live in Christian areas.
[soft dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Jerusalem remains in Christian hands until 1187
when Saladin, the hero of Islam,
draws together the Muslim nearest
to recover the Holy Land.
[men shouting]
narrator: As the Muslims close in on Jerusalem once again,
Pope Urban III realizes
that in his predecessors quest to defend Christianity,
he may have invited its demise.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
- The Pope really has to walk a tight wire
when he comes through the Holy Land.
♪ ♪
You have Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Massive faiths basically living on top of each other here.
♪ ♪
male narrator: In 2014, Pope Francis attempts
to unify three major religions in spite of the centuries
of Holy War that has divided them.
[indistinct shouting]
Pope Urban II called for violence
in the name of one world under one Catholic church.
And Pope Francis is still working
to heal the wounds his predecessor inflicted
almost 1,000 years earlier.
- Religion produces such varied emotions.
[gunfire, indistinct shouting]
There's tragedy, there are crimes.
It's a story of 2,000 years of such things,
and the Pope's have been part of that story
right from the start.
♪ ♪
narrator: In 1187,
after only 88 years under Christian rule...
[men shouting]
Saladin's Muslim army defeats the Crusaders
and reclaims the Holy Land for Islam.
♪ ♪
- When Saladin recovers Jerusalem in 1187,
some of his people suggest
they should destroy The Holy Sepulchre.
♪ ♪
It is Christ's tomb.
And he says, "No, let's let it survive."
Saladin is a man very much aware of the power of mercy.
- His rule was very different from that of the Crusaders.
Saladin was motivated by his belief
that Christians, Jews, and Muslims can
and should be able to live peacefully.
narrator: As a symbol of a new partnership
between Christianity and Islam,
Saladin entrusts the key
to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
to a Muslim family.
Even today, it's a Muslim's responsibility
to let Christian worshipers in and out
of the holiest church in Christendom.
♪ ♪
Pope Urban III is forced to surrender the notion
that Christianity must rule the world,
and negotiate new relationships
with other faiths.
- The recognition that it's a Christian space
that has to be protected by its Muslim rulers,
not in the sense of actually
preventing people from coming in,
but protecting Christians' rights to worship.
♪ ♪
narrator: Opening and closing the doors
to the holiest Christian site in Jerusalem
has been the responsibility of the al-Husseini men
for eight centuries.
We are protecting the church since 1187 until now.
♪ ♪
narrator: Saladin's gesture has come to symbolize
much of what the modern papacy represents...
[hatch creaking]
Divine leadership in the face of warring religions.
♪ ♪
narrator: Today, over 1,000 years after the first Crusade,
the Temple Mount area of the old city of Jerusalem
is still one of the most contested places on earth.
♪ ♪
A fragile peace holds
and the site seeks to become a shining example
of three different belief systems ability to coexist.
♪ ♪
narrator: Throughout history, the Pope has played
an integral role in the ongoing clash of the devout.
Thousands of years past,
millions of lives lost,
but the calls to battle
and prayers for peace still endure.
- Human beings constantly face a challenge
of trying to live in peace and harmony
with people different from you.
You've seen this throughout history.
[soft dramatic music]
narrator: The worlds of Urban II and Francis
are very different,
but their plight remains the same.
Both men are tasked with leading the faithful
in a world dominated by conflicting beliefs.
- The tremendous weight of taking on
the shepherding of the great tradition
and retranslating it for our time,
it's an impossible burden to imagine,
but isn't that also the beauty and simplicity
of the church?
narrator: In March of 2000,
Pope John Paul II apologizes for the Crusades
and the violent campaigns of his predecessors.
- [speaking Italian]
- We are asking forgiveness
for the use of violence in the name of truth
and for the attitudes of indifference and hostility
taken towards other religions.
narrator: Modern Popes choose to follow
the example of Saladin and preach coexistence,
unlike Pope Urban II, who chose war.
- The Pope is where you look towards
for an example to how to live your life as a Catholic.
♪ ♪
narrator: But despite being a religious leader,
the Pope's reach extends far beyond spiritual faith.
[bell tolling] - The Pope survives
because it continues to speak to
the deepest needs that people have.
They need to know that someone is looking out for them,
and all earthly institutions are flawed.
But to have an institution
which is dedicated to
looking out in a fatherly manner
for people who are lost and astray and suffering,
that need will never go away.
♪ ♪
- Jesus said to Peter, "You are the rock,
upon this rock, I will build my church."
A rock doesn't move. It's permanent.
So for faithful Catholics,
there seems to be a mysterious
but yet real depth of appreciation
for the stability and permanency
of this ideal of the papacy.
♪ ♪
narrator: Against all odds,
in the face of all that has threatened his reign,
2,000 years after the death of St. Peter,
the Pope remains at the head
of one of the most powerful institutions on earth.
[bells tolling]