The Vacant Chair

Atlanta, GA

January 23, 2022

I think I understand how Christians felt when in 1303 the French king imprisoned a beleaguered pope, hand-picked an obsequious successor, and precipitated a seven-decade papal encampment in Avignon on the Rhône. 

A subsequent schism created rival “popes” based in Rome and Avignon, with a third claimant coming from Pisa thirty y…