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This mabe a dumb question to some, but what exactly does the pope do? he cant save you, or forgive your sins, so what is there for?- just curious

he is the CEO of an institution of 1.3 billion people...he runs the show, he is the titular head of the CHRISTIAN church on earth....He is the Bishop of Rome and has the ordinary responsibilities there also.....a very busy guy

Actually he’s not CEO. Each bishop in his diocese has responsibility for governing, if you want to call that being “CEO.””

The pope is NOT a superbishop. He’s the Bishop of Rome and because he’s bishop of Rome he has the added-on role as successor of Peter of resolving disputes as I explained in a previous comment. But he does not and cannot “run” the whole Church around the world. That would be utterly impossible. The individual bishops together with him at their head, collegially govern.

First among equals, not superbishop.

In addition to resolving disputes (that’s his unique role as bishop of Rome as far as governing is concerned), which is a governing role, he has a teaching role and a sanctifying role. But all bishops have all three roles (and all priests by extension and delegation from their bishop have all three roles). All bishops govern in their diocese (and, when a council is called, govern the universal Church), all teach in their diocese authoritatively, all sanctify (bring the sacraments to the people). They all delegate various aspects to priests, even deacons. And every father and mother also have governing, teaching, sanctifying roles.

All of these roles go on with varying degrees of autonomy in their spheres. The pope does them at the highest level but not as big Boss, rather as the one out in front leading all the others who do these same things in varied ways.

He does have authority to appoint bishops but only since the breakdown of the church into Protestant national churches—in England or parts of Germany there were no local authorities who were still Catholic who could appoint bishops as had been done for centuries, so it was centralized in the Pope’s office, for the sake of holding the Church together against the centrifugal pressure of nationalism and Protestantism (same thing, more or less).