Question

What was the Western Schism and how did the Catholic Church solve the problem?.

Answer 1

options?

Answer 2

You don't say how much detail you need, so here's my summary
It's 1378, Gregory was pope and he died. He was pope of the Roman Catholic church. This is a while after they split with the Orthodox Church in Constantinople. It's a whole different schism.
What happens for the next 35 or so years is all politics. It's mostly France and Italians doing power plays. None of this is theological.
So Gregory is dead. Some cardinals in Rome come up with somebody they think they can control. He calls himself Urban. But France wants a French pope and figure they'll try with a guy who goes by Clement. He set up shop in Avignon.
This isn't the first time they've tried 2 popes. But usually one side backs down. This one was got the attention of most kingdoms of Europe at the time and lasted longer.
There are excommunications and tactics and intrigue and all that. Enough to make a movie.
It looked like it might end when Urban died, but they got Bonaface for awhile in Rome. Then Clement dies and France gets Benedict. Boniface dies so Rome goes with Innocent who died and they pick another Gregory.
England, Scotland, Naples, Poland, the Holy Roman Empire, Portugal and the rest each had allegiance to one of the popes because they didn't or did like France or whatever. They also got to tell each other that they were going to Hell for picking the wrong guy.
Just to make it interesting, Pisa got there own pope in 1409. He called himself Alexander but died a year later so Pisa got John.
So John, the Pisa pope, figured they really ought to go back to one pope. He called a meeting of everybody to figure it out. The meeting is know as the Council of Constance which lasted 4 years.
By the end of the Council everybody agreed to resign and they elected a guy on St. Martin's day1418, so he called himself Martin.
He made his way to Rome. Slowly. But he got there and was pope until he died in 1431. But the schism was over and the pope in Rome is still the main guy in Roman Catholicism.