History of the papacy not only his deep inner resignation but also his constant abandonment to divine providence.". It is this character trait, which led to the opening of the process of beatification and canonization for Paul VI. With the accession of Pope John Paul II after the mysterious death of Pope John Paul I (who only survived as pope for 33 days), the church had, for the first time since Pope Adrian VI in the 16th century, a non-Italian pope. John Paul II has been credited with helping to bring down communism in eastern Europe by sparking what amounted to a peaceful revolution
Byzantine Papacy regard Pope Theodore I, who reigned from 642 to 649, as the first Eastern pope of the Byzantine papacy). Boniface III was able to obtain an imperial proclamation declaring Rome as "the head of all the churches" (reaffirming Justinian I's naming the pope "the first among all the priests"), a decree Phocas intended as much to humiliate the Patriarch of Constantinople as exalt the pope. Phocas had a gilded statue of himself erected on a monumental column in the Roman Forum only three weeks after Boniface III's consecration, and in 609 by "iussio" authorized the conversion of the Pantheon into