Belgium rejects papal mediation

A British chronology of the war records under 5 November 1914 that the Belgian government rejected papal mediation. This brief entry is practically all that is known about the step from the available sources. It has not been possible to establish what form the Belgian reply took, or whether it concerned a specific proposal from the Vatican or rather reports of possible papal mediation. The background to the event, however, is well known.

Only four days earlier, on 1 November, Benedict XV, elected pope at the beginning of September, had published his first encyclical, Ad beatissimi Apostolorum. In it he identified the sources of the war as the abandonment of Christian principles: lack of love for one’s neighbour, contempt for authority, class struggle and greed for material goods. He called on the rulers of the warring states to end the bloodshed and to remember that there are other ways than war of obtaining redress for violated rights. The pope consistently remained impartial towards both sides of the conflict.

For the Belgians such impartiality was hard to accept. Their country, although neutral, had been invaded by Germany and almost entirely occupied, and its inhabitants had fallen victim to mass executions and destruction, as at Leuven and Dinant. The government, which since mid-October had been working in exile at Sainte-Adresse near Le Havre, could not agree to any peace that did not restore Belgium’s full independence. Mediation at that moment, with Germany occupying almost the whole country, could have entrenched the occupation. France and Britain saw it the same way, since for them the restoration of Belgian independence was one of the main aims of the war.

The pope’s next initiative also failed. On 7 December Benedict XV appealed for a truce at Christmas, so that “the guns may fall silent at least upon the night the angels sang”. The governments of the warring states rejected the idea. On Christmas Eve and over Christmas, however, a spontaneous Christmas truce, made by the soldiers themselves, took place on parts of the Western Front.

Belgium’s relations with the Holy See remained correct, but the Belgians received the pope’s further appeals for peace with distrust. The voice of the occupied country became the Archbishop of Mechelen, Cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier. In his pastoral letter “Patriotism and Endurance”, dated Christmas 1914, he condemned German violence and wrote that the power that had invaded Belgium was not a lawful authority, and that the Belgians owed it in conscience neither respect nor obedience.