The list of popes, from Peter to number 267

Who was the first pope has an answer nearly everyone knows, Peter. What I find more interesting is everything behind it, because the Holy See publishes its own list on vatican.va, with a number, dates and a birthplace for every pope, and reading it end to end throws up details you don’t expect. This page walks through that list with no current affairs in it, for anyone who wants to understand Rome and the Vatican through their popes.

Who was the first pope?

Peter, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus, as the St Peter’s website describes him. The official list puts him first, gives Bethsaida in Galilee as his birthplace and dates the end of his pontificate to AD 64 or 67, with no start date at all. That pair of years is a warning of what follows for nearly two centuries, because the list can only offer approximate dates for the earliest popes.

After Peter come Linus, born in Tuscia, then Anacletus, also called Cletus, the first the list marks as a Roman, and then Clement. Peter also has a physical link with the Vatican. St Peter’s website points out that he was the first pope buried there, beneath the high altar, and you reach his grave on the Vatican necropolis tour.

How many popes have there been?

The «Sommi Pontefici» list on vatican.va numbers 267 popes as of 29 September 2026. There’s a wrinkle almost nobody mentions. Benedict IX appears three times, as numbers 145, 147 and 150, because he held the office in three separate spells between 1032 and 1048, so behind those 267 numbers stand 265 men.

If you see a different total online, I’d stick with this one for a practical reason. It’s the numbering the Vatican’s own institutions use, and the one you’ll meet on tombstones, coins and inscriptions when you visit Rome.

The order of the popes, century by century

Read in order, the list is almost a map of who held sway in Rome. In the early centuries, alongside Romans and Greeks, it names popes from Africa, Syria, Dalmatia and Sardinia. Towards the end of the ninth century some reigns last only weeks, and in the eleventh there’s Benedict IX coming and going three times.

The twentieth century is the easiest to take in at a glance. Eight popes were elected between 1901 and 2000, from Pius X to John Paul II, and they’re in the table. So far this century the list adds three more. What I like about seeing them together is how the birthplaces change over a hundred years, from Riese in the Veneto to Wadowice, Marktl am Inn, Buenos Aires and Chicago.

There’s one name a British reader tends to look for first. Adrian IV, born Nicholas Breakspear, was pope from 1154 to 1159, and the list gives his birthplace as Abbots Langley in Hertfordshire. He’s the only pope on it born in England.

The longest and shortest reigns

Leaving Peter aside, the longest pontificate belongs to Pius IX, elected in June 1846 and pope until 7 February 1878, over thirty-one years. In that time he lost Rome, in 1870, and the pope withdrew into the Vatican, which I cover in my history of the Vatican. Next come John Paul II, at about twenty-six and a half years, and Leo XIII, who succeeded Pius IX and lasted until 1903.

At the other end, Urban VII was pope from 15 to 27 September 1590, twelve days. Boniface VI managed fifteen, in April 896, and Damasus II twenty-three, in the summer of 1048. In the twentieth century the shortest pontificate was John Paul I’s, from 26 August to 28 September 1978.

Repeated names and missing numbers

John is the most common name on the list, with 21 popes, followed by Gregory with 16 and Benedict with 15, since there’s no Benedict X either. And here’s my favourite oddity. Although the last one was John XXIII, there haven’t been twenty-three Johns, because the official list has neither a John XVI nor a John XX. It jumps from John XIX, in 1024, straight to John XXI, in 1276. I keep more quirks like that in my Vatican City facts.

Popes you can still visit

The list comes alive when you go down into the Grottoes. There, beneath the nave of St Peter’s and free from 09:00 to 18:00, lie twentieth-century popes such as Pius XII and Benedict XVI. John Paul II has been in the nave since 2011, and Francis lies outside the Vatican altogether, in Santa Maria Maggiore. Where each one is, and which you can see without booking, is in where the popes are buried.

If I only had an hour, I’d head down to the Vatican Grottoes with the list open on my phone. Seeing the dates in stone, a few steps from where the first pope was laid to rest, is the best history lesson the Vatican gives you without a ticket.