St. Peter being presented with the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.
Click the button above to visit the Catholic Research Resources Alliance (CRRA) website, home of the Catholic Portal, a catalog of rare, unique, and uncommon Catholic scholarly materials in the library collections of the over 40 member institutions of the CRRA. An ever-growing number of the items listed may contain links to the full-text!
CRRA has a growing collection of subject guides to assist users of their website in doing research. Click the link below to see these subject guides.
Need Help?
If you need help with research on this or any other topic, Ask Gumberg. You can also contact me, Ted Bergfelt, creator of this page. I am the library's liaison to the Theology Department. The best way to reach me with a question is via email
Welcome to this Gumberg Library research guide on the Papacy. According to the Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd Edition, "the papacy is the central governing institution of the Roman Catholic church under the leadership of the bishop of Rome. The word papacy "derives from the Latin papa, an affectionate term for 'father.'"
This research guide is designed to get researchers quickly to books and periodical articles on the office of the papacy, Vatican City, and individual popes, their writings and activities.
To see basic articles on the Papacy, click the links directly below. If you want to read the articles from off-campus, you will need to enter your Multipass information after you click on the title.
Papacy from the New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd Edition
Papacy from the Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd Edition
Reference Works
Some of these titles are electronic reference works. To use them off-campus, you will need to enter you Multipass username and password when you click on a title.
Encyclopedia of the Vatican and Papacy by 
Oxford Dictionary of Popes by Find Books
Click a link below to see all materials on that subject in the online catalog.
Find Books By & About Individual Popes
To conduct a search using the DUQSearch Advanced Search, click here.
Once there, to find books by or about an individual pope, enter his name in the first search box according to this pattern: Name, Number (Roman numeral, if they have one), and the word "pope." For example, to search for Pope Benedict XVI, we would type:
Benedict, XVI, pope
(You don't need to capitalize or use commas.)
To limit your search to print and ebooks only--no articles--make sure to scroll down after entering your search and clicking on this limit:
Books by a Pope
To find books by a particular pope, type the pope's name as instructed above in the search box and choose "AU Author" from the menu to the right of the search box. The click Search.
Books about a Pope
To find books about a particular pope, type the pope's name as instructed above in the search box and choose "SU Subject Terms" from the menu to the right of the search box. The click Search.
Limit a search to books only
Again, to limit your search to print and ebooks only--no articles--make sure to scroll down after entering your search and clicking on this limit:
Click an image to see it enlarged
Find Encyclicals
Finding the Text of an Encyclical
To find an encyclical in the online catalog, click here. Then type the Latin title for it in the first search box and choose "TI Title" from the pulldown menu on the left. In the second search box, type the name of the pope who wrote the encyclical following the pattern described in the box above, and change the menu to the right of this search box to "AU Author." (If you don't know the name of the pope, leave this out.) Then click Search.
Click an image to see it enlarged
Find Articles
These databases may be accessed from off campus. To do that, when you click on the link for a database, you will be asked for your Multipass username and password. Enter that information and you will then be able to search the databases as if you were in the library.
