Popes and the Catholic Church

Pope Leo XIV celebrated his inaugural Mass as the head of the Roman Catholic Church on Sunday, pledging to work for unity. The role of the world’s smallest sovereign state as a moral force in geopolitics was in full view, as the new Pope met Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelenskyy and called for peace in Gaza, Ukraine and Myanmar.

Questions:

1) Pope John Paul II visited this heavily Catholic territory in Southeast Asia in 1989 as part of a trip to the country it was then part of. He was the first world leader to visit the territory and called on authorities to respect human rights. The territory became an independent nation in 2002. Which country?

2) Pope Francis appointed Sister Raffaella Petrini to which position this February, one of several senior Vatican posts opened up to women during his papacy?

3) Which country has the largest Catholic population in Africa?

4) What ban was reaffirmed by Pope John Paul II in an apostolic letter issued in May 1994, just over two months after a historic change was implemented by the Church of England?

5) Which country has the largest number of Catholics in the world? Over the years though, the share of Catholics in the population has been falling, while the share of evangelicals is expanding.

6) What changed in the Catholic Church on Sunday, November 29, 1964? This was among the major reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

7) What was rejected by Pope Paul VI in the papal encyclical titled Humanae Vitae issued on July 25, 1968?

8) In 1988 Pope John Paul II canonised 117 people who lived in Southeast Asia in the 18th and 19th century in the largest group canonisation in church history at the time. The communist government of the country denounced many of those conferred with sainthood, calling them imperialists who paved the way for colonial rule. Which country?

9) The Eastern Catholic Churches Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara are headquartered in which state in India?

10) Which force was established by Pope Julius II in 1506?

11) What is the significance of the Lateran Treaty of 1929 with Italy for the Vatican?

12) Pope Leo XIV acquired citizenship of which country in 2015?

13) In 2015, Pope Francis canonised Marie-Alphonsine Danil Ghattas and Mariam Bawardy, two nuns who lived in the 19th century in which Ottoman-controlled region?

14) Which Catholic order of priests was founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola in 1539-40?

15) Which Catholic order was founded in 1244 in Italy when several communities of hermits living in Tuscany came together to ask Pope Innocent IV that they be united?

16) The Vatican is the only country in Europe to maintain formal diplomatic relations with which island?

17) Pope Pius XII instituted the annual feast of St. Joseph the Worker in 1955 as a counter to communism. On which day is the feast observed by the Catholic Church every year?

18) What is Rerum Novarum, an encyclical issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 focused on?

19) Which movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s was championed by Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez? He died in Lima at the age of 96 in 2024.

20) While in his thirties, he played a crucial role in the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s as chief theological advisor to the Archbishop of Cologne. He wrote booklets on each of the four sessions of the Council. But later he became a fierce critic of progressive ideas espoused at the Council. Who?

21) Catholic Jesuit priest Daniel A. Lord was a key figure in drafting the Production Code in 1929, a set of moral guidelines for which industry in the U.S.? The code lasted until the 1960s amid questions of censorship.

22) Archbishop Óscar Romero, who was assassinated while celebrating mass in 1980 amid civil war in his country was declared a saint by Pope Francis in 2018. Which country is he from?