PREPARATIVE FACTORS TO THE DECLINE OF PAPAL INFLUENCE IN EUROPE

St. Peter Known as the first pope was given the unique privilege, after Christ Himself, of being the principal foundation stone of the Church, and of possessing the keys symbolizing supreme authority in the Church. The other Apostles were to share as a group in the authority to teach and rule in the Church. Slowly the Church (Catholic) had universal authority in the Church, and the states where they have influence. Soon, the Vatican City began as a marginal player in the reshaping of the European international order after the First World War. The Vatican's interwar activism sought to disseminate a new Catholic vision of international affairs, which militated against the separation of church and state, and in many contexts helped undermine the principles of the League of Nations’ minority rights regime. Thanks in no small part to the assiduity of individual papal diplomats – who disseminated the new Catholic vision of international affairs by supporting anti-communist political factions – the Vatican was able to claim a more prominent role in European political affairs and lay the legal and discursive foundations for an alternate conception of the European international order, conceived in starkly anti-secular terms. This paper studies the decline of the decline of papal influence on Europe.