Papal Primacy Polity

Papal primacy polity is the church-governance form in which the bishop of Rome, the pope, is the visible head of the whole church and the bishops govern in union with him. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 882, calls the pope the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful, and says that as pastor of the entire Church he has full, supreme and universal power over it. Paragraph 883 adds that the college of bishops has no authority unless it is united with the pope as its head. The form therefore keeps an episcopal structure, with bishops in charge of local churches, but places one universal primate over it. In this atlas it is the polity value used for Roman Catholicism.