Two Thousand Years at a Glance

The history of the Church is the history of a holy Church made of sinners. Over two thousand years it has produced extraordinary saints and committed real wrongs, sometimes in the same century and the same city. The Church itself describes this tension: it is holy, yet always in need of purification and renewal (CCC 827). What follows is a short tour by era, meant to give a reader a map, not the whole territory.

The apostolic age (c. 30–100)

After Pentecost the apostles carried the Gospel from Jerusalem across the Roman world. Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome under Nero in the mid-60s. The books of the New Testament were written in these decades. See The Early Church for this period in detail.

The Fathers and the councils (c. 100–750)

The Church grew under intermittent persecution until the Edict of Milan in 313 gave it freedom. The great writers known as the Fathers of the Church, among them Athanasius, Basil, Augustine, Jerome, John Chrysostom and Gregory the Great, explained and defended the faith. The first seven ecumenical councils, from Nicaea (325) to Nicaea II (787), defined the Church's faith in the Trinity and in Christ, true God and true man. See The Councils.

Monks and the conversion of Europe (c. 500–1000)

As the Western Roman Empire collapsed, monasteries became centres of prayer, learning and farming. St Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–547) wrote a Rule for monks, built on prayer and work, that shaped Western monastic life for centuries. Missionaries carried the faith across Europe: Patrick to Ireland in the fifth century, Augustine of Canterbury to England (sent by Pope Gregory the Great in 597), Boniface to the Germans, and Cyril and Methodius to the Slavs in the ninth century.

East and West divided (1054)

Tensions between the Greek-speaking East and the Latin West, over authority, theology and culture, came to a head in 1054, when papal legates and the Patriarch of Constantinople excommunicated each other. The division hardened over the following centuries, not least after Western crusaders sacked Constantinople in 1204. In 1965, Pope St Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras lifted the mutual excommunications. Full communion has not yet been restored, but popes and Orthodox patriarchs now meet as brothers, and Catholics and Orthodox pray and work for unity.

The medieval Church (c. 1000–1500)

The high Middle Ages saw an astonishing flowering. Universities grew up in Bologna, Paris and Oxford. Gothic cathedrals rose across Europe. Two new kinds of religious order, the friars, went out into the growing towns: the Franciscans, founded by St Francis of Assisi (c. 1181–1226), who embraced radical poverty, and the Dominicans, founded by St Dominic (c. 1170–1221) to preach. St Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), a Dominican, wrote a synthesis of faith and reason that the Church still treasures.

Honest about the shadows: Crusades and Inquisition

The same centuries saw the Crusades, launched from 1095 to recover the Holy Land and protect Eastern Christians, which also involved massacres, including of Jews, and the sack of a Christian city. They saw too the Inquisition, Church tribunals to judge heresy, which at times used coercion and handed the condemned to civil authorities for execution. Historians continue to debate the scale and context of both, but the Church does not hide them. On 12 March 2000, the first Sunday of Lent, Pope St John Paul II led a Day of Pardon in St Peter's, asking God's forgiveness for sins committed by the Church's members, including the use of violence in the service of truth.

Reformation and Catholic reform (1517–1650)

When Martin Luther published his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, the Church in the West badly needed reform, and many of his complaints about abuses were real. The disputes that followed divided Western Christianity. The Catholic response came at the Council of Trent (1545–1563), which clarified doctrine and reformed the clergy, and in a wave of saints: Ignatius of Loyola and the Jesuits, Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross, Charles Borromeo, Francis de Sales.

Missions to the world (c. 1500–1900)

Missionaries carried the Gospel to the Americas, Africa and Asia. There was great light: Francis Xavier in India and Japan, Matteo Ricci's respectful dialogue with Chinese culture, Our Lady of Guadalupe's appearance to St Juan Diego in Mexico (1531), the defence of indigenous peoples by Bartolomé de las Casas, and the martyrs of Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Uganda. There was also deep shadow: missions entangled with conquest and colonial violence, and Christians who took part in or tolerated the slave trade. The Church honours the first and repents of the second.

The modern era (1800–1960)

The nineteenth century brought revolution and the loss of the Papal States. Vatican I (1869–1870) defined papal primacy and infallibility. In 1891 Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum defended workers' rights to a just wage and to form associations, founding modern Catholic social teaching. The twentieth century became a century of martyrs, under Nazi, Communist and other regimes: St Maximilian Kolbe, who gave his life for another prisoner at Auschwitz in 1941, St Edith Stein (Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), and countless others in Mexico, Spain, the Soviet bloc and beyond.

Vatican II and the popes since

The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) renewed the liturgy, encouraged reading Scripture, called all the faithful to holiness, and opened dialogue with other Christians, other religions and the modern world. Since then the Church has been led by:

• St John Paul II (1978–2005), who travelled the world, helped bring down Communism in Europe and gave the Church the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992);
• Benedict XVI (2005–2013), a theologian pope who renounced the papacy in 2013;
• Francis (2013–2025), the first pope from the Americas, who stressed mercy and care for the poor;
• Leo XIV, elected on 8 May 2025, the first pope from the United States.

Recent decades have also brought the grave scandal of sexual abuse by clergy and its cover-up, which the popes have acknowledged with shame and which the Church is still working to confront and repair.

Going deeper

• The Early Church: the first three centuries in detail.
• The Councils: the gatherings that shaped the faith.
• The Communion of Saints: the saints who light up every era.
• Read next in the Catechism: CCC 823–829 on the holiness of the Church.