In the nearly two thousand years since its founding, the Catholic Church has provided a spiritual home for billions of followers. Renowned professor Thomas F. Madden leads listeners through the events that have helped create the modern church from the Renaissance period to the twenty-first century. Along the way, the audience will learn about the people who influenced and guided the church-priests and saints, laymen and popes-through some of its most difficult times and in some of its most glorious moments.