Why would individual christians make an appeal to the Pope of Rome to get their property back from the Roman Government? That would be the worse mess of paperwork ever. The document is referring to regional vicars of some kind. Using the singular doesn’t imply there is just one. It just implies that there is one in each particular province.
From the earliest times, the Christians of the whole world have consulted the popes on all matters pertaining to faith, morals, and discipline.
The earliest instance is the well-known appeal from Corinth to Pope Clement I, during the lifetime of St. John the Apostle, in the first century of the Christian Era.
From that time on, requests for decisions on various ecclesiastical matters were addressed to the Holy See from all parts of the known world, and the answers that were received were reverenced as proceeding from the mouth of Christ’s chief Apostle and His vicar on earth.
The fact that the decrees of Church councils, whether general, provincial, or even diocesan, were anciently as a rule forwarded to the pope for his revision or confirmation, gave occasion for many papal constitutions during the early ages.
After the time of Constantine the Great, owing to the greater liberty allowed to the Church, such intercourse with the Apostolic See became more frequent and more open.
St. Jerome, in the fourth century (Ep. cxxiii), testifies to the number of responses requested of the sovereign pontiff from both the Eastern and the Western Church during the time he acted as secretary to Pope Damasus.
That these papal responses soon began to constitute an important section of canon law, is evident from statements in the letters of various Roman pontiffs.
In fact, a papal constitution is a legal enactment of the ruler of the Church, just as a civil law is a decree emanating from a secular prince.
