The first words that we have recorded as spoken by Jesus are the words from the Last Supper, as given to us by St. Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians: (11:24-25): "This is My Body, which is for you. Do this as a memorial of Me". In the same way He took the cup after Supper, and said, "The Cup is the New Covenant in My Blood. Whenever you drink it, do this as a memorial to Me". This illustrates that "The Eucharist" - "The Mass" - was being celebrated in Europe within twenty years of the Last Supper. The Gospels were written after St. Paul's letters.

In the early times the Church was divided by language and culture. There was the Hebrew Church based in Jerusalem, but with the persecutions there, many left and went to the Greek speaking world and this Greek Speaking Church was based in Antioch, where St. Peter was the Bishop before going to Rome. Then there was the Latin speaking section of the Church, which ultimately became the dominant part of the Church. The Hebrew Church, the oldest part of the Church is still in existence in the Palestinian Church today. The Greek speaking Church is now basically the Greek Orthodox Church, though there is a Greek speaking Catholic Church based in Jerusalem.

The Church had converted most of the Roman Empire by the spreading of the Word of God as lived in the lives of the early Christians. The actual Book of the New Testament was not available for nearly 400 years after Jesus had risen. The present Bible that is used by most Christians became the official Word of God after St. Augustine held a Council in his Diocese of Hippo in North Africa in 393 and accepted the 45 Books of the Old Testament and the 27 Books of the New Testament. This List (Canon) was then accepted by the Council of Carthage and confirmed by the Pope in Rome.

The name Catholic was first used by Bishop St. Ignatius of Antioch in his Letter to the Smyrnaens written about 105 AD on his way to martyrdom in Rome. He wrote in the context of the Eucharist and the Bishop: "... Where the Bishop appears, there let the people be, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church." He takes it for granted that these people knew what this name implied. The Church that was 'everywhere'. Antioch was also the place where the word Christian was first used (Acts 11:26). So Catholic and Christian come from the same group of believers at the same time. The word Catholic was used by the Bishops at the Council of Nicaea in 325 to describe the universal Church: as One Holy Catholic and Apostolic.

History shows that the Catholic Church preserved and handed on western civilization during and after the barbarian invasions of Western Europe which finally destroyed the western section of the Roman Empire. Most of the older cities of Europe come from these times, as they were the places of the Monasteries during the barbarian invasions. These monasteries were in far off places and became places of refuge for the people, who then settled around the monasteries and so they became the cities of modern Europe.

A pivotal moment in Church and European history was 28th October 312 when the Roman Empire in the West came under the domination of Constantine who defeated his co-emperor, Maximilian, just outside Rome at Milvian Bridge. Constantine gave his protection to Pope Miltiades, the 32nd successor of St. Peter as Head (Pope) of the Church as Bishop of Rome. The Emperor's palace in Rome at the Lateran was given to the Pope. The first officially sanctioned Christian Church was built by Constantine beside the palace. This Church is still the Cathedral of the Pope as the Bishop of Rome and the Popes lived in the Emperor's Palace for a thousand years, after which the residence was moved to the Vatican, the site of the burial place of St. Peter. Constantine built the first St. Peter's Basilica. The present church is the second building on this site.

Modern Western democracy comes more from the Benedictine Monasteries of the Church, than from ancient Greece or the Magna Carta. While the monks were having "one-man one vote" and replacing leaders on a regular basis by elections, the rest of the world has really only come to be able to do this in the last few hundred years. The monasteries were also the leaders in agricultural development, hospitality, care of the sick and travellers and those in need, education and the handing on of the Sacred Scriptures by literally writing out the Sacred Scriptures by hand e.g. Lindisfarne Gospels, the Book of Kells. The Rule of St. Benedict, written about 640, is one of the most important books in the Western world, after the Bible. It is still in use all over the world in Religious Houses, as it was written by St. Benedict.

The conversion of King Clovis of the Franks in 498, and the Crowning of Charlemagne on Christmas Day in St. Peter's in Rome in 800 were two very important events in world history. Clovis was the first of the barbarian kings to become Catholic, and Charlemagne became the first of the Holy Roman Emperors. This event began the ultimate break between the Eastern and Western Churches, as there was at the time a Roman emperor in Constantinople who claimed the title of Emperor of the west.

The final break between the Eastern and Western Churches took place in 1054. A Reunion took place for a short time in 1439 at the Council of Florence. However there was no real reunion and fourteen years later Constantinople fell to the Turks and the Byzantine Eastern Roman Empire ceased to exist. Basically the Great Schism has never been healed. The Decrees of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 (which divided the Church into Patriarchates and the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome in the universal Church), the use of certain words in the Nicene Creed and the after effects of the Fourth Crusade with the capture and sacking of Constantinople in 1204... are the main problems keeping apart the Eastern and Western Church to this day.

The Crusades have been a talking point for centuries. Why did they happen? We must see them in terms of real events and history. Before the rise of Islam, the whole of the Middle East was part of the Christian empire. Mohammed died in 632. Jerusalem and Palestine were captured within ten years of his death. By 711 Spain had been taken by Islam. Pilgrims had continued to visit the Holy Land and places. This peaceful arrangement continued until on 4th October 1009 when the Caliph of Egypt, al-Hakim, ordered the Christian Holy Places to be destroyed and the persecution of pilgrims to begin. The most sacred tomb of Christ was attacked and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was torn down. This sent shockwaves through Christian Europe and laid the foundations of Christian - Muslim strife for the centuries to come. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was rebuilt by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VIII in 1027. However the damage to relationships had been done. The break between the West and East in the Church occurred in 1054, which did not help the situation. In March 1059 the Turkish Sultan Toghrul began the dreadful massacre and deportation into slavery of the Armenian Christians. This continued until 1067. In 1071 the Byzantine Christian army was totally defeated at Manzikert. Most of the Christian areas of modern Turkey were now lost to Islam. The great Christian city of Antioch in Syria was lost in 1085. This was where Christians were first called Christians and the word Catholic was used. Pope Urban II's call to Crusade at the Council of Clermont in 1095 was in response to the appeal from the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus. Seen in this light of history the Crusades were not spontaneous attacks on peace loving innocent peoples who were viciously attacked for no reason. Antioch was recaptured in 1098 and Jerusalem on 15th July 1099.

King John Of England, the brother of Richard the Lionheart of Crusader appeal, surrendered England to Pope Innocent III at Dover on 15th May 1212 and received it back as a Papal fiefdom for "homage and tribute". John's father, Henry II had been given rights to Ireland in 1154 by the only Englishman to be Pope, Adrian IV. This unfortunate part of history is still being played out in Northern Ireland today.

The sad story of The Reformation and the Counter Reformation is also still being played out in the world today. The Black Death of nearly 150 years before 1517 had left the church with poorly educated clergy and the feeing of "eat, drink, be merry". This problem was being overcome, as the education of Martin Luther himself shows. The black death era had had a grave effect on the morals of the people. Between 1348 and 1350 nearly one third of all the people between India and Iceland died of this mysterious plague. The Church had many chances of reform, with the Fifth Council of the Lateran ending the very year that Luther nailed his 95 theses (Theological statements) on the door of Wittenberg Church in 1517.

Although Luther was condemned by Pope Leo X in 1520, the reforming Council of Trent did not gather until 1545. By this time the Church had been torn apart by the resulting protestant revolt. The Council met on and off for eighteen years, but the results were long lasting and its reforms were still influencing the Church right up to Vatican II. The Reformation became one of the greatest religious, cultural and social revolutions in European history.

The New World of the Americas was discovered for the Europeans by Columbus in 1492 and immediately the Church undertook the christianisation of this huge new mission field. Interestingly in the century which followed, while many parts of the Old World fell away from the Catholic Church, the greatest missionary era in the Church's history took place in other parts of the world.

It was at this time that Turkish military invasions of eastern Europe intensified. A decisive naval battle with the forces of the Ottoman (Turkish)  Empire was fought at Lepanto in Greece in 1571. An Ottoman army was defeated at the gates of Vienna in 1683. These military victories by the Catholic forces saved Western Europe from becoming part of the, until then, ever expanding Ottoman Empire which had destroyed the Eastern Roman Empire.

The continuing story of the Catholic Church is still being written on the world stage, with the Church the largest group of people in the world with a common belief and on an international basis. Each area of the world scene has its own Catholic story and people this very day are still adding to the pages of this story. If you would like to know more, contact your local Catholic Church or the Catholic Enquiry Centre in Sydney or just look up the Internet or visit your local library. It is an unbelievable story of how our world really came to be as it is today.