17-05-2025
The material traits that define a pope
Robert Francis Prevost who took over the leadership of the catholic church as Pope Leo XIV is 69 year old, significantly younger than his predecessor Pope Francis (76 in 2013) and Pope Benedict XVI (78 in 2005) when they became popes. Leo XIV is the first modern pontiff to hold a degree in mathematics. These anecdotal observations raise some broader questions: are popes getting younger or older? How long do their tenures last? And how have their educational backgrounds evolved? The charts below explore each of these in detail.
Although Leo XIV, whose inauguration will be held on May 18 is younger than his immediate two predecessors at their time of election, this doesn't represent a long-term decline in papal age. Examining all 105 pontiffs from 1124 to the present reveals an average election age of 63. When broken down by century, the figures fluctuate: the mean age in the 12th century was 63.4, falling to 55.0 by the 14th century, before climbing steadily from the 19th century onwards to reach 74.6 in the current century. Of course, there are outliers. Celestine III, the oldest of those examined, was over 86 when he began his reign in 1191. Even so, he wasn't the oldest ever elected: Boniface VI is generally believed to have been around 90 when he became pope in 896. At the other extreme, John XII, elected in 955, may have been as young as 17 (or, by some accounts, up to 25), and Benedict IX possibly even younger—estimates suggest he was between 11 and 22 at the time of his election in 1032.
Traditionally, popes serve for life. However, there have been rare exceptions—Benedict XVI who resigned in 2013 is the only modern-era pope to do so. From Sylvester II (999 AD) onwards an average papal reign has been of approximately 7 years and 9 months. That average, however, fluctuates by century: it dipped to around 4 years and 5 months in the 13th century, rose to about 15 years and 10 months by the 19th century, and is nearly 10 years so far in the 21st. Although the Church officially recognises St Peter, the first pontiff, as the longest-serving pope—with a tenure of some 34 years—many historians dispute this, noting that the "Liber Pontificalis", a series of concise biographies of the popes beginning with Saint Peter, records his tenure to have been of 25 years. The most reliably documented long-serving pontiff was Pius IX, who held office for just under 32 years until his death in February 1878.
In short, yes. Historically, most popes were in their sixties when elected. Global life expectancy at birth only reached that level in the 1980s. As mentioned above, almost all popes have served until death and comparing papal ages at the end of their reign (usually their age at death) with average human life expectancy highlights a stark gap. Even in the 1800s, when life expectancy at birth was around 28–30 years, the average papal age at the end of tenure was around 77.
HT gathered data on the educational history of pontiffs going back to 1700s. All popes from Clement XI to the newly elected Leo XIV have held at least one doctoral degree—except for Pius X (1903–1914) and Pope Francis, who recently died. Throughout history, pontifical education has centred overwhelmingly on theology, philosophy and canon law—an emphasis entrenched by John Paul II's 1990 apostolic constitution "Ex Corde Ecclesiae", which mandates that every Catholic university maintain a faculty or chair of theology. Its juridical component, canon law, remains the oldest continuously functioning legal system in the West. Over time, while the curriculum remained focused on humanistic and juridical disciplines, occasional outliers such as Pope Francis—who graduated from a technical secondary school with a chemical technician's diploma—and even the medieval scholar Pope Sylvester II, famed for his work in mathematics and astronomy, have popped up. The newly elected Pope Leo XIV, however, breaks fresh ground as the first modern pontiff to hold a degree in Mathematics, which he gained from Villanova University in Pennsylvania, and which he complemented with subsequent theology and canon-law credentials.
