First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, October 1st, 2003
Twenty-five years as pope is no small thing. When John Paul II celebrates his papal jubilee this October 16, he will be only the third pope in history to have done so. So rare is the milestone that when Pius IX (1846-1878) reached it in 1871 his image was placed over the famous bronze statue of St. Peter in the Vatican Basilica with an inscription stating that he had equaled the reign of the apostle himself (pious tradition gave Peter twenty-five years as pope, though the dates are historically uncertain). His successor, Leo XIII (1878-1903), was elected at sixty-eight, with the expectation ...
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