From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishpapacypa‧pa‧cy /ˈpeɪpəsi/ noun 1 → the papacy2 [uncountable]RRC the time during which a pope is in power
Examples from the Corpus
papacy• The twelfth-century papacy was rooted in a distant and revered past.• Perhaps the reason for the discovery was the increasingly legalistic papacy that had emerged.• Without a territorial base the papacy could not be independent of imperial and other influences.• And subsequent tradition, aposteriori, will proclaim Simon Peter the first Bishop of Rome and the founder of the papacy.• The emperors, indeed, had saved the papacy in the period before Hildebrand.• In 1378 a schism, occasioned by a double election to the papacy, split the western Church.• But is this in a rather different sense to that in which the papacy understands itself? 