They were all the same. Murder, rapes, explotiation, just like today's Catholic church. Repugnant, everything bad they did was and is in the name of religion.
APEX: The Islamic Empire directly governed the people it controlled, but the Roman Catholic Church relied only on its influence with rulers.
The Catholic faith came AFTER the Roman empire fell.
The Roman Catholic church survived the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The Orthodox Church survived the fall of the Byzantine Empire.
The Catholic Church in the West and the Orthodox Church in the East
It is when The Roman Catholic Church and The Eastern Orthodox Church had The Great Schism, in which The Roman Catholic Church broke off The Orthodox Church.
The seat of power of the Catholic Church is the Vatican. This is a very small area in the centre of Rome (which comprises the Basilica of St Peter's, several buildings and a big garden) and is an independent city-state.
The Roman Empire persecuted the Catholic church. When the Roman empire began it's downfall, the Catholic church began to gain more and more power. When the Roman empire finally fell, the Catholic church was the most powerful figure around. Many people seeked help from the church. Monks and Nuns educated the children and poor, hungry people were fed. Just a little clarification. During the Roman empire there was no such thing as the Catholic Church. The religion was simply Christianity. Although initially there were many sects of Christianity, they finally united. It was not until the Protestant Revolt begun by Martin Luther that the denominations of Christianity came into existence, Catholic being one of them.
Roman institutions eventually collapsed. The institution which survived and grew stronger was the Latin Church, which later came to be called the Roman Catholic Church.
Roman Catholic AnswerThe political impact of the protestant revolt was what scholars call the Counter-Reformation or the Catholic Reformation.
Simply, the Roman Empire divided into the Western Roman Empire (based in Rome) and the Easter Roman Empire (based in Constantinople). Once the western empire fell, the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches diverged and evolved in isolation. The full history is significantly more complex, but that is the answer in a nut-shell.
Latin is preferred as this is the Language of the Roman Catholic Church and of the Roman Empire.
The Byzantine Church was used for worship. Following the death of the Roman Emperor Constantine, the Roman Empire split into the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire. Eventually, the Bishop of Rome became the head of the church in the Roman Empire. Over the years, that church became the Roman Catholic Church. The Bishop of Constantinople became the head of the Byzantine Church. That church evolved into the Greek Orthodox Church and still exists today.