This week in Christian history: Nashville Statement, Polish ecumenical gathering, Gregory the Great

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Sunday, August 28, 2022

Pope Gregory the Great consecrated – Sept. 3, 590

A seventeenth century painting of St. Gregory the Great, who served as head of the Roman Catholic Church from AD 590 until his death in AD 604. | (Photo: Public Domain)

This week marks the anniversary of when St. Gregory the Great, whose writings greatly influenced Medieval Christianity, was made head of the Roman Catholic Church.

A staunch proponent of monastic life who would lend his name to the musical genre “Gregorian Chant,” Pope Gregory was also known for extensively championing missionary work and increasing papal influence on Italian political affairs.

“With regard to things spiritual, he impressed upon men's minds to a degree unprecedented the fact that the See of Peter was the one supreme, decisive authority in the Catholic Church,” explained the Catholic Encyclopedia.

“Seizing the opportunity which circumstances offered, he made himself in Italy a power stronger than emperor or exarch, and established a political influence which dominated the peninsula for centuries.”

About a thousand years later, Protestant Reformation leader John Calvin reportedly called him the “last good pope.”