Islamic religious leaders Islamic religious leaders Islamic religious leaders have traditionally been people who, as part of the clerisy, mosque, or government, performed a prominent role within their community or nation. However, in the modern contexts of Muslims minorities in non-Muslim countries as well as secularised Muslim states like Turkey, Indonesia and Bangladesh, religious leadership may take a variety of non-formal shapes. Compared to religious leaders/clerics of the other Abrahamic faiths, Islamic clergy are said to resemble rabbis and not priests. Unlike Catholic priests they do not "serve as intermediaries between mankind and God", have "process of ordination", or "sacramental functions", but instead
Hierarchy of the Catholic Church independent state within the city of Rome, set up by the 1929 Lateran Pacts between the Holy See and Italy. As popes were sovereigns of the papal states (754–1870), so do they exercise absolute civil authority in the microstate of Vatican City since 1929. Ambassadors are accredited not to the Vatican City State but to the "Holy See," which was subject to international law even before the state was instituted. The body of officials that assist the Pope in governance of the Church as a whole is known as the Roman curia. The term "Holy See" (i.e. of Rome) is