Roman Catholic Church

From Metapedia

The Roman Catholic Church or Catholic Church is based in Vatican City, Rome, Italy with the Bishop of Rome, currently Pope Benedict XVI as its spiritual leader. It traces its origins to the original Christian community founded by Jesus and spread by the Twelve Apostles, in particular Saint Peter.

The Catholic Church is the largest Christian church, representing around half of all Christians, and is the largest organized body of any world religion. According to the Statistical Yearbook of the Church, the Catholic Church's worldwide recorded membership at the end of 2005 was 1,114,966,000, approximately one-sixth of the world's population.

The worldwide Catholic Church is made up of one Western or Latin and 22 Eastern Catholic autonomous particular churches, all of which look to the Bishop of Rome, alone or along with the College of Bishops, as their highest authority on earth for matters of faith, morals and church governance. It is divided into jurisdictional areas, usually on a territorial basis. The standard territorial unit, each of which is headed by a bishop, is called a diocese in the Latin church and an eparchy in the Eastern churches. At the end of 2006, the total number of all these jurisdictional areas (or "Sees") was 2,782.