We define the compact universal cover of a compact, metrizable connected space (i.e. a continuum) X to be the inverse limit of all continua that regularly cover X. We show that such covers do indeed form an inverse system with bonding maps that are regular covering maps, and the projection φ : X → X = X/πP (X) of the inverse limit is a generalized regular covering map, where X is a continuum that is "compactly simply connected" in the sense that πP ( X) = 1. We call πP (X) the "profinite fundamental group" of X. We prove a Galois Correspondence for closed normal subgroups of πP (X), uniqueness, universal and lifting properties. As an application we prove that every non-compact manifold that regularly covers a compact manifold has a unique "profinite compactification", i.e. an imbedding as a dense subset in a compactly simply connected continuum. As part of the proof of metrizability of X we show that every continuum has at most n! non-equivalent n-fold covers by continua.