Absolute Power
How the Pope Became the Most Influential Man in the World

An interesting idea that starts by exploring the development of papal power but turns into a potted history (and somewhat political evaluation) of recent popes. The thread of the main idea just about aurvives to the end but frays as Collins calls for an unsurprising laundry list of reforms to the Ch......more

I became a little fixated after Easter on understanding Catholic structures and history a little better. This book focuses on popes over the last several centuries, mixing in quite a bit of other church politics and theory about centralized authority versus the "body" of the church. I struggled a bi......more

Excellent history and analysis of role of the pope from 1799-present day. What I found fascinating was how much the role of pope changed. I thought Mr. Collins' observation about popes during my lifetime are surprising deep. His insights into Pope Saint John Paul II and Pope Paul the VI explained a l......more

Ábsolute Power” is author Paul Collins’ interpretation of Papal History from 1799 to the present in which he critiques the concentration of power in the Popes’ hands. The tale commences with the death of Pope Pius VI, a prisoner of Napoleon by whom the Papal States had been occupied. Although many w......more

This is a history of the papacy from the death of Pope Pius VI in 1799 to the unfinished papacy of Pope Francis. So the papacy in the nineteenth century, the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty first century. Pope Pius VI died as a prisoner of Napoleon and was buried in unconsecrat......more