{"id":17230,"date":"2025-08-06T11:22:36","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T15:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/?p=17230"},"modified":"2025-08-06T11:22:37","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T15:22:37","slug":"papal-pundit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/issues\/summer-2025\/papal-pundit\/","title":{"rendered":"Papal Pundit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Professor<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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It\u2019s been a busy year for Professor Jo\u00eblle Rollo-Koster. Upon the death of Pope Francis and the election of Pope Leo XIV, she was in demand by media outlets as an authority on all things papal; and a three-volume history of the papacy, which she edited, was published this year.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you followed the news earlier this year of the death of Pope Francis and the ascension of Pope Leo XIV, you likely encountered reports that included the scholarly input of Jo\u00eblle Rollo-Koster.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Master Class: Papal Scholar<\/h2>

History professor Jo\u00eblle Rollo-Koster’s picks for seven popes you should know.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/a><\/div>\n\n\n

Rollo-Koster, a äçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾ history professor and fellow of the Medieval Academy of America\u2014the highest career recognition bestowed upon a medievalist\u2014was in the media spotlight as a go-to expert, answering questions on Francis\u2019 legacy, the private conclave that elects the next pope, and frontrunners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI did not keep exact track, but there were days when I had seven interviews,\u201d says Rollo-Koster, who spoke with journalists from local to international outlets, including the BBC, CNN, Fox News, and The New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrancis was a true humanitarian and, I think, truly concerned with peace. I heard him lead the Angelus prayer at St. Peter’s Square in January. He emphasized the necessity of humanitarian aid reaching Gaza and expressed hope for both Israel and Palestine, advocating for a two-state solution,\u201d she says. \u201cHe was also the first pope to show real concern for the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pope Francis died in April. The election of Robert Francis Prevost\u2014Pope Leo XIV\u2014the first pope from North America, was, Rollo-Koster says, a somewhat surprising choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was expecting\u2014like in politics\u2014a turn to the right. But for the Church and the papacy, there is no right turn,\u201d she says. \u201cPeople think there is a major difference between traditionalists and liberals, but \u2018politically\u2019 they are aligned. They all agree on the main issues: no women, no divorce, no same-sex marriages.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rollo-Koster, who grew up in Toulon, France, fell in love with medieval studies at the University of Nice, finding freedom to explore questions and discover new sources in a field with relatively fewer scholars. The same was true for the medieval papacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cInterior view of St. Peter\u2019s Basilica in the Vatican, from Vedute di Roma.\u201d Etching by Giovanni Battista Piranesi circa 1748.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\u201c<\/span>I was expecting\u2014like in politics\u2014a turn to the right. But for the Church and the papacy, there is no right turn.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00ad\u2014Professor Jo\u00eblle Rollo-Koster<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe best thing about studying the papacy and the Church is that they have extensive archives and documents, so there is always something new to discover and interpret,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A specialist in the Avignon Papacy and the Great Western Schism, Rollo-Koster has published widely on social, cultural, religious, and political life in the late Middle Ages, including eight books. She is the lead editor on The Cambridge History of the Papacy<\/em>, a deep dive into the evolution of the 2,000-year-old papacy. The three-volume, 2,400-page history was published this spring by Cambridge University Press. The six-year project, which, she grants, \u201cis not light reading,\u201d brought together 90 specialists as writers and is the first in-depth history of the papacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Tony LaRoche \u201985<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PHOTO: MICHAEL SALERNO<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

History professor Jo\u00eblle Rollo-Koster has had a busy year talking about the election of Pope Leo XIV and rolling out a three-volume history of the papacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":17208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[347],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-summer-2025","architecture-currents","architecture-newsmakers"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17230"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17379,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17230\/revisions\/17379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}