You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, Sprouts. Today is Thursday, November 15th, 2018. It is also the feast of St. Albert the Great.

This week on the Catholic Sprouts podcast, we have been talking about the Catholic Church, which you belong to.

On Monday, we talked about how the Catholic Church is the largest denomination of Christians

in the world with over one billion members. We also talked about how our church was founded

by Jesus Christ, but is a church of human beings whom we should pray for often.

On Tuesday, we talked about how our church is universal,

meaning no matter where you are in the world,

the Catholic Church remains the same.

Yesterday we talked about how the sacraments hold us together as Catholics.

And today, we are going to talk about the Pope. As you might know,

St. Albert the Great was a Pope. He was Pope long time ago, though. He lived in the 1200s.

And although that sounds like a long time ago, there were lots of popes even before him.

In fact, there has been a pope for the Catholic Church since the time that Jesus Christ

walked on the earth. In fact, the very first pope was put into office, you might say,

by Jesus himself. Our first pope was the apostle Peter. Jesus in the gospel turns to Peter and says,

You are the rock upon which I will build my church.

And with those words, he made Peter the leader of the early church, the first pope.

Now, Peter did not have a big, beautiful basilica to practice mass in. He didn't have the Pope Mobile,

and he probably didn't wear red shoes, but he was the Pope. All of those traditions have been

added in the years and generations and centuries since St. Peter became Pope. But we have, without interruption, had a Pope since that time.

In fact, you probably know that our current Pope is Pope Francis. He lives in Rome in St. Peter's Basilica, and he continues to guide our church today.

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