After some discussion among my friends about the different Religious Orders in the Catholic Church, I decided to look into past popes and their affiliated order. I was surprised by a few things:
- There have been so many Popes.
- A surprising number of Popes were not part of a Religious Order.
- The discussion page for the wikipedia page on the list of popes is a very, very, interesting place.
The following graph is a visual represenation of the Religious Orders of the Popes of the Catholic Church. The starting nodes on the left side are the names and dates of the Popes. From there, the nodes went either to the name of a family, or "None". From there, family nodes which have no sub-orders will end there, and families which have sub-orders will break apart into those orders.
From the reading I've done online, it seems like there's no neat, single answer. From what I've read, it seems like Religious Orders and Holy Orders are two different types of things. A Holy Order is the sacrament of ordained ministry. A Religious Order is a community of consecrated life. Not everyone who is part of a Religious Order has partaken in Holy Orders. For example, in the Jesuit Religious Order, those who have taken Holy Orders are "Fathers", and those who have not are "Brothers". Similarly, not everyone who has received Holy Orders is part of one of those communities of consecrated life.