Let’s start with what papal infallibility is NOT. It is not the belief that whatever the pope says is never incorrect. If the pope says Argentina is going to win the World Cup, that is not infallible. It also does not mean that everything the pope says is a matter of the faith and morals of Church teaching and thus has to be believed.
Papal infallibility is based on the teaching that the Catholic Church can never be wrong on matters of faith or morals. That means that the Church can never promote a teaching of faith or morals that is in error. So papal infallibility means that the pope, when he is exercising his role “as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful – who confirms his brethren in the faith he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals” (para. 891) is teaching the truth of the Church.
Previous popes have made use of this in an extraordinary way twice, in declaring Mary the Immaculate Conception and that she was assumed body and soul into heaven. Pope St. John Paul II has made use of infallibility in an ordinary way a number of times, in declaring that the Church cannot ordain women as priests, and that acts such as “homicide, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, and voluntary suicide” (Veritats splendor, par. 80) are intrinsically evil. Read more about papal infallibility in the Catechism, paragraphs 888-892
Know your faith. Live your faith. Teach your faith.
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