Who was Pope Benedict XV?

The election of Pope Benedict XVI in 2005 sparked considerable interest in his namesakes. Among them was the last pope named Benedict, who reigned from 1914 to 1922 and is probably the least known of the 20th-century pontiffs. In fact, Prof. John F. Pollard's 1999 biography of Benedict XV is appropriately entitled The Unknown Pope.

World War I

A former Vatican diplomat, Giacomo Cardinal Della Chiesa of Bologna, was elected pope on September 3, 1914, and took the name Benedict XV. The new pope immediately devoted his attention to World War I, which had broken out about a month earlier.

Despite tremendous pressures, Benedict XV refused to take sides and maintained the Vatican's strict neutrality. The pope sought to play the role of mediator between the Allies (France, Britain, Russia) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria) and frequently appealed for the restoration of peace. Benedict's neutrality outraged both sides, who accused him of sympathizing with their enemies.

With his calls for peace ignored, Benedict organized massive relief efforts on behalf of refugees, civilians, and prisoners of war. In his biography The Life of Benedict XV (1959), Walter H. Peters writes that the pope "had depleted the [Vatican's] treasury in charitable contributions during the war and after." In fact, when the pope died in 1922, the Vatican Secretary of State had to borrow money to pay for the funeral.

Reports of atrocities poured into the Vatican with demands that the Pope condemn them. Since the Vatican was rarely able to verify the reports, which were often exaggerated and the product of wartime propaganda, the Pope limited himself to condemning atrocities in general terms. "And we do proclaim it without modification, condemning openly every injustice by whatever side it has been committed," he said on January 22, 1915.

Armenian Genocide

Pope Pius XII, who used Benedict's wartime policies as a model for his own during World War II, was not the first pontiff to confront genocide. During World War I, the Ottoman Empire exterminated over one million Armenians. Prof. Pollard details how Benedict XV responded to the Armenian genocide.

In July 1915, the Pope instructed Msgr. Luigi Dolci, the apostolic delegate in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), to protest the massacres with the Ottoman government. The Pope called on Germany and Austria-Hungary to pressure their Turkish ally to stop the killings and made a personal appeal on behalf of the suffering Armenians to the Ottoman Empire's Sultan Mehmed V, who was also the Islamic Caliph (spiritual leader of Muslims).

Peace Note

On August 1, 1917, Benedict XV submitted his Peace Note to the belligerent powers. His plan for a "just and lasting peace" among nations included international arbitration to settle disputes, freedom of the seas, reciprocal disarmament and renunciation of war debts, and the evacuation and restoration of all occupied territories.

The belligerent powers, including the United States, all rejected the pope's peace note. However, President Woodrow Wilson's famous "Fourteen Points," which he articulated in January 1918, were similar to Benedict's peace proposals. After the war ended, the Pope was excluded from the peace conferences.

On the Jews

Although Benedict XV opposed the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, thinking it would harm Catholic interests there, he publicly defended the rights of Jews. On February 9, 1916, Pietro Cardinal Gasparri, the Vatican Secretary of State, replied to an appeal the Pope received from the American Jewish Committee (AJC) to intervene on behalf of Jews who were being persecuted in Poland. Gasparri informed the AJC that the Pope "considers all men his brethren" and: "he will not cease to inculcate the observance among 'individuals, as among nations, the principles of natural right and to reprove every violation of them. This right should be observed and respected in relation to the children of Israel, as it should be as to all men, or it would not conform to justice and to religion itself to derogate therefrom solely because of a difference of religious faith."

At the time, the Vatican's letter received substantial attention in the international press and earned enthusiastic praise from Jews. "Among all the Papal Bulls ever issued with regard to Jews throughout the history of the Vatican there is no statement that equals this direct, unmistakable plea for equality for the Jews and against prejudice upon religious grounds," Herman Bernstein, the editor of the American Hebrew newspaper in New York City, said, as quoted by the New York Times (April 17, 1916). The AJC hailed the letter as a "virtual encyclical against anti-Jewish prejudices."

Death

On January 22, 1922, Pope Benedict XV died after being stricken with pneumonia. Many statesmen, newspapers, and leading representatives of the Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim faiths all graciously eulogized him and recalled his countless efforts on behalf of peace and to alleviate the human suffering caused by war. The Turks, who appreciated the Pope's charitable efforts on their behalf, erected a statue of Benedict XV in Istanbul that honours him as "the benefactor of all people, irrespective of nationality or religion."

Over the next few decades, Pope Benedict XV gradually faded from memory. He was nearly forgotten by his flock and the rest of the world, and Benedict's successors greatly overshadowed his relatively short but active papacy. Fortunately, the decision of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger to choose the name Benedict gave both Catholics and non-Catholics the opportunity to rediscover Benedict XV, who is no doubt one of the most underrated and underappreciated popes in recent centuries.