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Benedict XV, né Giacomo della Chiesa (November 21, 1854-January 22, 1922), was Pope of the Roman Catholic Church from 1914 to 1922; he succeeded Pope Saint Pius X.
He was born in Genoa, Italy, of a noble family. He acquired a doctorate of law in 1875, after which he studied for the priesthood and then the training school for the Vatican diplomatic service - most of his career was spent in the service of the Vatican.
Benedict XV - Supreme Pontiff (1914-1922) Cardinal Mariano Rampolla was a friend and patron, employing him as a secretary on being posted to Madrid and in a similar post on being appointed Secretary of State. During these years he helped negotiate a dispute between Germany and Spain over the Caroline Islands as well as organising relief during a cholera epidemic. When Rampolla left his post with the election of Pius X, and was succeeded by Cardinal Merry del Val, Chiesa was retained in his post.
However, Chiesa's association with Rampolla, the architect of Leo XIII's relatively liberal foreign policy and Pius X's rival in the conclave of 1903, made him suspicious in the eyes of the new ultra-conservative regime. He was soon to be moved out of the diplomatic service and the centre of Church power in Rome, on 16 December 1907 becoming Archbishop of Bologna.
On 25 May 1914 Chiesa was appointed a cardinal and, in this capacity, on the outbreak of World War I, and the death of Pius X, he made a speech on the Church's position and duties, emphasising the need for neutrality and promoting peace and easing suffering. The Conclave opened at the end of August, and, on 3 September 1914, Chiesa was elected Pope, taking the name of Benedict XV.
His pontificate was dominated by the war and its turbulent aftermath. He organised significant humanitarian efforts (establishing a Vatican bureau, for instance, to help prisoners of war from all nations contact their families) and made many unsuccessful attempts to negotiate peace, including the well_known Papal Peace proposal of 1917, but each side saw him as biased in favour of the other and were unwilling to accept the terms he proposed. This resentment saw the Vatican was excluded from the peace negotiations on the war's end; despite this, he wrote an encyclical pleading for international reconciliation, Pacem Dei munus. In the post war period Benedict was involved in developing the Church administration to deal with the new international system that had emerged.
In internal Church affairs, Benedict calmed the excesses of the campaign against supposedly modernist scholars within the Church which had characterised the reign of St. Pius X. He also promulgated a new Code of Canon Law in 1917 and attempted to improve relations with the anticlerical Republican government of France by canonising the French national heroine Joan of Arc. In the mission territories of the Third World, he emphasised the necessity of training native priests to replace the European missionaries as soon as possible.
In his private spiritual life, Benedict was devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of all the modern Popes was the most fervent in propagating the wearing of the Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, endorsing the claim that wearing it piously brings "the singular privilege of protection after death" from eternal damnation, and giving an indulgence for every time it is kissed.
Benedict XV died of pnuemonia at the age of 67 in 1922. Although one of the less remembered of the Popes of the twentieth century, he deserves commendation for his humane approach in the world of 1914_18, which starkly contrasts with that of the other great monarchs and leaders of the time.
External links
- Benedict XV's five point peace plan (http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1917/popeace.html)
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