Yo, parish orphans and retrogrades.

I have begun in the first two parts, a three-part series on all of the 267 Roman Catholic pontiffs.

This is the third part.

It's been an excellent overview of church history in a word, in the word pope.

That's the watchword.

The first 170 popes are now under our belt.

That means that we're going to do the last, the final 97 popes all in today's show.

We're going to go really fast.

And I'm going to fly through saying just the

major fact on them, stopping for brief trends in history, as we've done through the first

170 pontificates. Remember, the major takeaway is that of the first 49 pontificates, only

only one was not a saint. The first 48 were saints.

So 48 out of 49 of the first popes were all saints. Almost all the first 32 were martyrs.

And since those first 49 from 50 to 170, large swaths of pontiffs have been not sainted.

And I would say this, particularly in the period from 800 to, I'd say 700 to about 1100, 1050, let's say, 1054.

The ones that aren't saints tended to be, largely speaking, bad men.

And the papal maximalists out there, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, don't know what to do with this.

The fact that there are so many bad men in the pontiff, there's so many great saints

in that first 49, so many great saints that follow, but they're smattering.

They're a smattering, just a sprinkling in popes 50 through 170 that we've

been through and i was just perusing briefly we're going to undertake it right now starting at

pontificate number 171 we don't get another saint pope for at least 10 pontificates or so so you keep

...