The Catholic church however, despite numerous claims to the contrary, was not the original church founded by Christ. Of course Paul ministered to the church in Rome while a prisoner there, and history provides abundant evidence of the sufferings and persecutions inflicted upon that church by the emperors in those early centuries.
The Catholic church which had its beginnings in Rome however was not that church that went through such troubles, holding to the doctrines of the apostles and preaching truth to power, and paying for their faithfulness with their blood. The Catholic church had its beginnings amidst compromise and syncretism as a result of the union of church and state after Constantine abandoned Rome leaving a vacant civil throne...a civil throne that was inherited from paganism, and resulted in many pagan practises being incorporated into Christian teaching. At first, this was only local. Rome was not the only Christian church in the world at that time. The gospel had been taught and embraced by that time from Britain to the far east, to North Africa and Asia. Even in Rome there was a section of the church that refused to follow the political aspirations of the local bishops I'm their quest to use the state to empower her false teachings.