Re: Pope passed away!
Hey Catty, I check in with a Shia Islam site every once in a while, and every poster there has a huge picture of his favored Imam. No difference.
The Christian theory very simply is that Jesus called for the assembly of a church to honor him. His apostles wrote about their experiences with Christ, and they started to assemble the church after his death. From the writings of the apostles (highly edited mind you) the bible was assemble. The Catholic church was formed a couple of hundreds of years after the death of Christ, and the Pope is the spiritual leader of the church. Now historically the Pope, some of the Saints and others have claimed mystical powers, ie conversations with Christ or the appearance of miracles. Most Christians beleive this is just hocus pocus, but there are some branches of the Catholic Church in particular that do beleive in "miracles" from God.
So the Pope is the leader of a church that honors Christ, his mother Mary, and worships God.