The etymology of “pope”: a warm word of hope?

There are many words that come to mind regarding Pope Francis, who died on Easter Monday at 88.

Humility. Compassion. Service.

Inclusive. Progressive. 

Divisive, as I’m sure some of his critics would say.

Imperfect, as I’m sure he’d be the first to say.

And speaking of first, we might add distinguished. Francis was the first pope to take that name, the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, the first to visit the Arabian Peninsula, the first Jesuit, and more—though certainly Francis would emphasize that the last shall be first, and the first last.

When I think of him—filtered through my own proudly Jesuit education, through my own tug of war with Catholicism, my own struggles with doubt—what first comes to mind is not the contents of any encyclical, but of his disarming countenance.

I think of warmth. No, this is not a word at the tip of many tongues when it comes to associations with the Roman Catholic Church. But it fits Pope Francis—and, I think, it fits the origin of the word pope, rooted as it is in a child word’s for “father.”

The etymology of pope

Pope is “papa,” and this is the form it took in Old English. 

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) finds evidence for papa in a translation of venerable English monk Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People dating to around the 800s. By 1200, we have evidence for the spelling pope, reflecting a significant shift in its pronunciation. 

We can’t move on here without noting the form poope, which makes for an amusing 1581 passage by English schoolmaster and pedagogical theorist Richard Mulcaster: “Make not all priestes that stand vpon the bridge as the Poope passeth.” (I’m looking at you, Dave Matthews. Look, we must cut the wine of solemnity with some water of levity.)

The Old English papa is borrowed from the Latin papa, used as an honorary title for bishops and, in turn, from the Greek πάππας (páppas), a child’s word for “father” and featuring a reduplicated syllable characteristic of infant babbling. We can find an intimacy, a tenderness, a warmth, in this.

Papacy (the office of the pope) and papal (referring to the pope or papacy) are both recorded in the late 1300s, and both retain their etymological a.

Now, the pope isn’t just any bishop. He’s the bishop of Rome, who is the head of the Roman Catholic Church. The title papa was applied to the bishop of Rome starting in the early 300s and, according to the OED, “claimed exclusively” by the office in 1073. (This very day, April 22, in 1073, marked the election of Pope Gregory VII, who instituted many lasting reforms, including clerical celibacy.) Here’s the OED on the matter at length:

The Greek and Latin words (meaning originally ‘Father’) were, like English father (and modern Romance equivalents), addressed or applied to spiritual fathers. In Hellenistic Greek and Byzantine Greek πάπας (also παπᾶς) was applied to bishops, especially the bishops of Alexandria (from 3rd cent.) and Rome (from 4th cent.), as well as ordinary priests. Post-classical Latin papa, used as a term of respect for ecclesiastics of high position, especially bishops, occurs in the early 3rd cent. in Tertullian, and was applied as late as 640 by St Gall to Desiderius, bishop of Cahors. But from the early 4th cent. it was in the Western Church applied especially to, and from 1073 claimed exclusively by, the bishop of Rome.

Papa—as a general English address for “father,” not “pope”—is only recorded in the late 1600s! It ultimately shares the same Latin and Greek roots as pope, but passed into English from the French. Again, the OED is edifying on the matter:

Originally (when first introduced from French) the word [papa] was in courtly and polite use by adults as well as children. Later it was used mainly by children, and gradually declined in British English from the second half of the 19th cent.

The dictionary notes, in that parlance of lexicography, that papa is now “chiefly North American.”

Rhymes with pope

Of course, there are many more words that come to mind when people think of popes—such as the patriarchy and paternalism of male-only priests in Catholicism, modeled as it on Jesus, the son of God, yclept the Father.

(Patriarchy and paternalism have their roots in the Greek and Latin for “father,” related to each other as well as to English’s own father.)

This can be true, and at the same time it can be true that Pope Francis’s spiritual paternity—grounded deeply in universal love, common good, and social justice—can serve as a welcome and needed contrast to the pompous, misanthropic, toxic, and empty masculinity so many of our other leaders display. (I’m not looking at you, Dave Matthews.)

In our current moment, dark and uncertain, I, as with so many of us, have been toiling to stave off cynicism, even creeping nihilism.

How fitting, then, that 2025 is a special year in the Roman Catholic Church, known as a jubilee, and that it is centered on that antidote to cynicism and worse: hope. As Pope Francis proclaimed of the jubilee, alluding to scripture and in Latin: Spes non confundit.

“Hope does not disappoint.”

He went on, in words that—regardless of your stance towards the papacy, Catholicism, or religion—brim with understanding, insight, humanity. That radiate warmth:

Everyone knows what it is to hope. In the heart of each person, hope dwells as the desire and expectation of good things to come, despite our not knowing what the future may bring. Even so, uncertainty about the future may at times give rise to conflicting feelings, ranging from confident trust to apprehensiveness, from serenity to anxiety, from firm conviction to hesitation and doubt. Often we come across people who are discouraged, pessimistic and cynical about the future, as if nothing could possibly bring them happiness. For all of us, may the Jubilee be an opportunity to be renewed in hope.

For more papal etymologies, find out what pontiff has to do with “bridges” and why the pope’s other signature piece of headwear is called a miter.