What roles did Pope Paul III, Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits, and the Council of Trent play in the Counter-Reformation? In the following post, I will briefly answer these questions and provide a brief overview of the Catholic/Counter-Reformation, including its roots. First of all, the Catholic/Counter-Reformation Reformation was the response and/or reaction of the Catholic church toward the challenges made by the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. The Protestant Reformation started with Luther’s proclamation of the 95 theses in 1517 while Leo X was the Pope of the Catholic church. But it was not until the papacy of Paul III that significant …