Benedict XV appeals for peace

The British chronology of the war records under 30 July 1915 that the Pope addressed an appeal for peace to the governments of the belligerent states. This was the apostolic exhortation Allorché fummo chiamati (“When We were called”), addressed “to the peoples now at war and to their rulers”. The document is dated 28 July 1915, the first anniversary of Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war on Serbia. It has not been possible to establish from the available sources on which day the text reached the governments and the press. The Vatican published it officially in its official journal, the Acta Apostolicae Sedis.

“Horrible slaughter”

Benedict XV recalled that from the first day of his pontificate he had resolved to devote all his strength to reconciling the warring peoples, but his counsels had “remained unheeded”. Now, on the “sad anniversary”, in the name of God he implored the rulers to put an end to “this horrible slaughter which for a whole year has dishonoured Europe”. He wrote that the fairest regions of the continent were strewn with corpses and ruins, and that the guns spared neither villages nor cities. Responsibility for war and peace rested with those who governed, who would have to render an account of it before God. The wealth of their countries allowed them to fight on, but at what price?

The Pope rejected the belief that so great a conflict could not be ended other than by force of arms. He warned that nations do not die: humbled and oppressed, they bear the yoke imposed on them with anger, prepare revenge and hand down from generation to generation a sad inheritance of hatred and vengeance. He therefore proposed that the rights and just aspirations of the peoples be considered now, and that a direct or indirect exchange of views begin. “Blessed be he who will first raise the olive branch and hold out his right hand to the enemy, offering reasonable terms of peace,” he wrote. The equilibrium of the world, he added, rests more on mutual goodwill and respect for the rights of others than on masses of armed men and rings of fortresses.

The Pope in a difficult position

It was another of Benedict XV’s appeals. He had called for peace immediately after his election as pope, then in his first encyclical of 1 November 1914, and in December he had proposed a Christmas truce. The governments took up none of these initiatives, and Belgium rejected papal mediation.

Since then the position of the Holy See had grown even worse. In May 1915 Italy entered the war. Germany and Austria-Hungary then withdrew their representatives to the Vatican from Rome and moved them to Switzerland, which made the Pope’s contacts with the Central Powers very difficult. What is more, in the Pact of London the Italians had extracted from their allies a secret undertaking that they would not admit the Holy See to future peace negotiations. The Pope was also in an awkward position towards his own flock: Catholics fought on both sides of the front, and each side expected the head of the Church to condemn the enemy.

An appeal without an answer

The appeal, like the earlier ones, had no effect. None of the governments took up the call for talks. For the Entente powers a peace concluded in the summer of 1915 would have meant accepting the German occupation of Belgium and northern France. The Central Powers were at the height of their success: in those same days their armies were pushing the Russians ever deeper in the Kingdom of Poland, and a few days later, on 5 August, they entered Warsaw. Neither side saw any reason to negotiate.

Benedict XV did not give up. The Vatican mediated in the exchange of seriously wounded prisoners and helped in the search for the missing, and in the autumn of 1915 the Pope ordered a collection for the victims of the war in the Polish lands. The phrase “horrible slaughter” foreshadowed the words with which the Pope went down in history: in his peace note of August 1917 he called the war a “useless slaughter”.