The past twenty-five years have seen four popes and the Church grow by more than 400 million people. They have also been marked by intense turbulence, with sexual abuse scandals shaking the Church’s foundations, most notably the 2002 Boston Globe reports in the United States, followed by an annus horribilis in 2018, when the actions of the now-deceased Theodore McCarrick were made public alongside the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report.
Liturgical wars have also been waged. Pope Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum, which liberalised the use of the Traditional Latin Mass, was reversed within his lifetime by Pope Francis’s restrictions under Traditionis custodes. Doctrinal battle lines were also drawn when Pope Francis’s 2016 apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia was met with dubia, and again when the release of Fiducia supplicans saw entire bishops’ conferences reject its application.
The Church nevertheless remains the largest non-government provider of education in the world, running more than 74,000 kindergartens, 100,000 primary schools, and nearly 50,000 secondary schools, educating tens of millions of students worldwide. It also continues to operate thousands of health facilities globally, including approximately 5,405 hospitals and 15,276 homes for the elderly, chronically ill, or disabled.
Despite scandal and infighting, the Church’s appeal endures, with a noticeable increase in conversion and interest in the Western world alongside sustained growth in the global south. Below are twenty-five photographs capturing a quarter of a century of Catholicism.
2000
Pope Saint John Paul II blesses pilgrims during his traditional Christmas Day Urbi et Orbi blessing on 25 December 2000 in Saint Peter’s Square, Vatican City. Pope John Paul II denounced the violence in the Middle East, as the region was then in the grip of the Second Intifada, and warned against the “culture of death” threatening the future of the world.
2001
Father Christopher Keenan participates in the funeral for New York Fire Department chaplain Rev. Mychal Judge, a victim of the World Trade Center attack, outside St Francis of Assisi Church in New York on 15 September 2001. Judge was killed while giving last rites at the scene of the attack.
2002
Miami Archbishop John C. Favalora and Bishop Thomas Wenski speak to the news media on 17 June 2002 in Miami, Florida. The US Conference of Bishops approved the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People on 14 June 2002, banning priests who sexually abuse children from ministerial duties, regardless of when the abuse was committed.
2003
Missionaries of Charity sisters watch the beatification of Mother Teresa on a large screen projection in Calcutta on 19 October 2003.
2004
Pope Saint John Paul II and US President George W. Bush pose during their meeting on 4 June 2004 in Vatican City. Bush was on a two-day visit to Italy en route to commemorations marking the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, France. The Iraq War, which John Paul II was vehemently opposed to, was the primary point of friction in discussions.
2005
Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, waves from a balcony after being elected by the conclave of cardinals on 19 April 2005 in Vatican City. The 265th pope would lead the world’s one billion Catholics for eight years, succeeding Pope Saint John Paul II, who died on 2 April that year.
2006
Pope Benedict XVI delivers a speech to faculty and students at the University of Regensburg on 12 September 2006 in Regensburg, Germany. Muslim leaders condemned some of the pope’s remarks about Islam, with protests taking place around the world.
2007
Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro Carambula celebrates the Traditional Latin Mass at St Giuseppe a Capo le Case church in central Rome. On 7 July 2007, Pope Benedict XVI issued Summorum Pontificum, a decree allowing wider use of the Traditional Latin Mass. The document stated that “in parishes where there is a stable group of faithful who adhere to the earlier liturgical tradition, the pastor should willingly accept their request to celebrate the Mass according to the rite of the Roman Missal published in 1962”. The decree was issued motu proprio, Latin for “of one’s own accord”, meaning the pope did not take counsel from others.
2008
Some 150,000 pilgrims from 170 nations attend the opening Mass of the 2008 World Youth Day on the shores of Sydney Harbour on 15 July. The festival was the largest religious gathering ever held in Australia.
2009
A sign written in Dutch is carried during a procession of Saint Damien of Molokai’s relics from the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Peace to Iolani Palace on 1 November 2009 in Honolulu, Hawaii. The state marked Damien’s canonisation with a Mass and an interfaith celebration highlighting the enduring popularity of the 19th-century priest. The commemorations followed his canonisation in Rome several weeks earlier by Pope Benedict XVI.
2010
Pope Benedict XVI greets crowds gathered outside Westminster Cathedral in London on 18 September 2010 after presiding over Holy Mass during a historic visit to the United Kingdom.
2011
Former Anglican bishops the Revd John Broadhurst, the Revd Andrew Burnham, and the Revd Keith Newton are received into the Catholic Church by Archbishop Vincent Nichols at Westminster Cathedral, London, on 15 January 2011. Their ordination marked the beginning of the Ordinariate.
2012
US President Barack Obama, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney pray at the start of the 67th Annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City on 18 October 2012.
2013
Argentina’s Jorge Bergoglio, elected Pope Francis, waves from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica after being chosen as the 266th pope on 13 March 2013. His election followed the shock resignation of Benedict XVI.
2014
Pope Francis attends the opening sessions of the Synod on the Family at the Synod Hall on 6 October 2014 in Vatican City.
2015
Pope Francis celebrates Mass and opens the Holy Door of St Peter’s Basilica on 8 December 2015 in Vatican City. During the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, he inaugurated the Jubilee Year of Mercy. “The Extraordinary Holy Year is itself a gift of grace,” the pope said in his homily.
2016
Cardinal Christoph Schönborn poses with a copy of the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, on love in the family, officially presented to journalists in Italian, French, English, German, Spanish, and Portuguese on 8 April 2016 at the Vatican.
2017
A member of a six-person team from the Roj Mine Control Organization, a non-governmental organisation working in Kurdish-held areas, stands with an explosives detector outside the heavily damaged Armenian Catholic Church of the Martyrs in the city centre of Raqqa, eastern Syria, on 20 December 2017.
2018
Abuse committed by Theodore McCarrick comes to light, alongside questions over who knew the extent of his activity and why swifter action against the then cardinal had not been taken.
2019
Flames rise during a fire at the landmark Notre-Dame Cathedral in central Paris on 15 April 2019.
2020
Pope Francis delivers an extraordinary Urbi et Orbi blessing in a rain-soaked, empty St Peter’s Square during the Covid-19 pandemic.
2021
Pope Francis celebrates Holy Mass for the opening of the Synod of Bishops on 10 October 2021 at St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.
2022
Synod members sing and pray during the final day of the “Synodaler Weg” Catholic reform movement congress on 5 February 2022 in Frankfurt, Germany. In 2022, the German Synodal Way advanced votes endorsing same-sex blessings, women’s preaching, changes to sexual ethics, and reconfiguration of Church authority.
2023
The body of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI lies in state at St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican on 3 January 2023.
2024
The global fallout from Fiducia supplicans continues, with entire bishops’ conferences, most notably across Africa, maintaining formal refusal to permit blessings of same-sex couples.
2025
Pope Leo becomes the Catholic Church’s 267th pontiff on 8 May, taking the papal name Leo XIV.
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