Questions and Answers
Why is the Pope called the “Holy Father”?
The Pope is called the “Holy Father” because the Catholic Church is a family and the Pope is the head (on this earth) of that family. Because the head of a family is called “father” and the Church is holy, we call the head of the Catholic Church the “Holy Father.”
The use of family language among members of the Mystical Body of Christ goes back to Our Lord Himself. Recall that passage of the Gospel when Our Lord says: “‘Who is my mother and who are my brethren?’ And stretching forth His hand towards His disciples, He said, ‘Behold my mother and my brethren! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother’” (Mt. 12:48-50).
We use family language in our home because of the blood relationship that exists between the members of our family. What Our Lord is indicating in this quotation is that family language is also appropriate to use for those who are united by a spiritual relationship.
In his encyclical on the Mystical Body, Mystici Corporis, Pope Pius XII points out that Our Lord became the head of the human race by His Incarnation, and that He became Head of the Church by His death on the Cross.1 It is through this Cross that we become united to Our Lord. We become members of His Mystical Body and His own life dwells within us.
St. Paul speaks of this spiritual union of our life to the life of Christ in several places, one of which is Romans 6:3-4: “Know you not that all we, who are baptized in Christ Jesus, are baptized in his death? For we are buried together with him by baptism into death; that as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life.” After baptism, we have a changed life, a supernatural life that has as its basis the life of Christ dwelling in our souls.
When we begin to live that life of Christ, we share that life with all those who have been baptized. The parallel to a family here is very close. The children of a family all receive life from their parents. Because their life comes from the same source, they have a connection one to another; they are brothers and sisters. Similarly, the members of the Catholic Church all receive supernatural life from a single source, Our Lord Jesus Christ. By this fact, and by the fact that they work for the same end, have the same beliefs, the same worship, and the same authority, they are connected to one another2; they are brothers and sisters in a spiritual family.
Pope Pius XII speaks of the union that exists among the members of the family in this way:
“It is at once evident that this union is very close. In the Sacred Scriptures it is compared to the chaste union of man and wife, to the vital union of branch and vine, and to the cohesion found in our body (Eph. 5:22-23). Even more, it is represented as being so close that the Apostle says: ‘He (Christ) is the Head of the Body of the Church,’ (Col. 1:18) and the unbroken tradition of the Fathers from the earliest times teaches that the Divine Redeemer and the Society which is His Body form but one mystical person, that is to say to quote Augustine, the whole Christ. Our Savior Himself in His sacerdotal prayer did not hesitate to liken this union to that wonderful unity by which the Son is in the Father, and the Father in the Son (Jn. 17:21-23).”3
It is for this reason that you find family language everywhere in the Catholic Church. Sts. Peter, Paul, James, John, etc., refer to believers as brothers and sisters. The priest, at Mass, calls the faithful his brothers at the Confiteor and the Orate, Fratres; he asks God to accept the offering of his service and that of God’s whole family at the Hanc Igitur; and, in a more indirect way, he refers to our connection with the saints and other faithful departed who have gone before us.
The prayers of the liturgy sometimes speak of the Church as a family. Consider this beautiful prayer of the office of Tenebrae on Holy Thursday and Good Friday: “Look down, we beseech thee, O Lord, on this thy family, for which our Lord Jesus Christ did not hesitate to be delivered up into the hands of wicked men, and to suffer the torment of the Cross.”
We call Our Lady our Blessed Mother and the heads of convents mother superiors. We address our priests as “father,” our monks as “brother,” our nuns as “sister.”
It should not surprise us, then, that the Church has reserved an especially endearing term for the one who is the Vicar of Christ on earth. The word “Pope” in English hides the affection embodied in the title. It literally is “papa” or “daddy.” And, to distinguish the Pope from all other priests, we call him the “Holy Father” instead of just “Father.”
The word “Pope” is Greek in its origin and, in the first centuries of the Church, it was used to refer to bishops as well as the Holy Father. But, over time, this term of endearment was reserved exclusively for the successor of St. Peter.4 Catholics throughout the ages have considered it normal to refer to the earthly head of God’s spiritual family in terms of fatherhood.
Endnotes
1 Mystici Corporis, par. 30.
2 See Ibid., par. 68-69.
3 Ibid., par. 67.
4 Calderon, Alvero, La Santa Misa y La Vida Cristiana (Ediciones Corredentora, 2024), p. 281.
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