The Pope is
often said to be the “servant of servants.” This has led some, including some
errant Catholics, to think this means that this is a pious term, showing how
the Roman Pontiff serves his fellow people. However, this is not the true
meaning of the term. As Romano Amerio, a Catholic priest, noted:
When the Pope uses the title of servus servorum Dei, originally assumed
by Pope St. Gregory the Great as a description of the power of the Supreme
Keys, one must remember that the formula servus
servorum is not a genitive of object, as if the pope were the one who
serves the servants of God, but an hebraic genitive signifying a superlative
sense as in saecula saeculorum, virgo
virginum, caeli caelorum (literally: age of ages, virgin of virgins, heaven
o heavens, but in fact: all ages, greatest of virgins, highest heaven), and so
on. The formula therefore means that the pope is the servant of God more than
all others, the servant of God par
excellence, not that he is the servant of those who are the servants of
God. Were it otherwise, the formula would tend to imply that the pope was the
servant of men rather than of God, and would also imply that only the pope was
not a servant of God, while everyone else was. (Romano Amerio, Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the
Catholic Church in the XXth Century [trans. John P. Parsons; Kansas City,
Miss.: Sarto House, 1996], 150)
