The Church understands herself as being sent. In the First Vatican Council she states: “To his beloved disciples, stating the name with which he called them: As the Father has sent me, even so I send you” (John 20:21). We also understand from both Pope Gelasius I and Innocent X, the equality of Peter and Paul, but yet Paul gave due subordination to Peter by reason of his Primacy.
Jesus Christ is the leader of the Church. But he is not the visible head. His vicar, the Pope, is his visible head. And we give the invisible head honor, when we honor his visible head. “If any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother; he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother, whom he seeth, how can he love God, whom he seeth not?” (1 Jn 4:20)
In Mark 3:14, 16: “And he appointed twelve, to be with him, and to be sent out to preach and have authority to cast out demons. And he appointed the twelve.” Would your question ought to be, Who are those twelve today? Catholics have discovered that the bishops are the successors of those twelve. Bound by divine law.
The First Vatican Council stated: “If anyone denies that there is a Hierarchy in the Church by divine ordination…established with the power of orders and jurisdiction…let him be anathema.”