Benedict XV elected pope

On 3 September 1914 the cardinals gathered in the Sistine Chapel elected a new pope. He was the Archbishop of Bologna, Cardinal Giacomo della Chiesa, who took the name Benedict XV. He succeeded Pius X, who had died two weeks earlier. The Catholic Church received a new head at a moment when the Catholics of France, Belgium, Germany and Austria-Hungary were fighting one another at the front.

A conclave in the shadow of war

The conclave began on 31 August. 57 of the 65 cardinals took part. Several did not arrive in time, among them the cardinals from the United States, who reached Rome only after the election. Among the electors were citizens of states that were at that moment fighting each other: French, Germans, Austrians and Belgians. The war was the most important backdrop to the deliberations. Many cardinals believed that the Church now needed an experienced diplomat rather than, as under Pius X, primarily a pastor and defender of doctrine.

The choice was not easy. Some cardinals wanted a continuation of Pius X’s policy, others were looking for a more open candidate. Della Chiesa was regarded as a compromise candidate. He won only in the tenth ballot, receiving according to accounts 38 of the 57 votes, exactly the required two-thirds majority. Because the margin was so narrow, Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val, Pius X’s Secretary of State, reportedly demanded a check that della Chiesa had not voted for himself. The check confirmed that the election was valid.

A diplomat from Genoa

Giacomo della Chiesa was born in 1854 in Genoa into an aristocratic family. After studying law and theology he entered the papal diplomatic service. He was a close collaborator of Cardinal Mariano Rampolla, Leo XIII’s Secretary of State, with whom he worked at the nunciature in Madrid and then in Rome. In 1901 he became Substitute in the Secretariat of State. In 1907 Pius X appointed him Archbishop of Bologna, which was sometimes read as removing him from the Curia. He received the cardinal’s hat only in May 1914, just a few months before the conclave.

He chose the name Benedict in honour of Benedict XIV, an 18th-century pope who had also previously been Archbishop of Bologna. Because of the war his coronation on 6 September was a modest affair, held in the Sistine Chapel rather than in St Peter’s Basilica. He appointed Cardinal Domenico Ferrata Secretary of State, and after his death in October 1914 Cardinal Pietro Gasparri.

The pope of peace

From the outset Benedict XV proclaimed the impartiality of the Holy See towards the warring sides. In his first encyclical, Ad beatissimi Apostolorum of 1 November 1914, he called on rulers to end the bloodshed. He also proposed a truce for Christmas 1914, but the governments rejected it. The Vatican mediated in the exchange of seriously wounded and sick prisoners, and helped to search for the missing and to pass messages to their families.

His most important initiative was a peace note dated 1 August 1917 and addressed to the governments of all the belligerent states. In it the pope called the war a “useless slaughter” and proposed a concrete plan: disarmament, arbitration instead of war, freedom of the seas, mutual renunciation of reparations and the evacuation of occupied territories, including Belgium and northern France. Territorial disputes were to be settled by agreement, taking the aspirations of peoples into account. The note had no effect. The warring sides considered it premature or favourable to the enemy. In France the pope was called “the German pope”, in Germany “the French pope”.

Benedict XV and Poland

Poles have a special reason to remember Benedict XV. In April 1915, on his instructions, Cardinal Gasparri approached the Bishop of Kraków, Adam Stefan Sapieha, with a proposal that the Polish bishops appeal to the Catholics of the world for help for the Polish lands devastated by the war. The pope ordered a collection in all the Catholic churches of the world. It took place on 21 November 1915 and was one of the largest relief efforts for Poland during the war. It was supported, among others, by Henryk Sienkiewicz, who from Switzerland directed the committee for aid to the victims of the war in Poland.

In his peace note of 1917 the pope listed among the questions to be settled the fate of the lands of the former Kingdom of Poland, writing that its noble historical traditions and its sufferings, especially during this war, ought to win it the sympathy of nations. In April 1918 he appointed the prefect of the Vatican Library, Father Achille Ratti, apostolic visitor to Poland. Ratti arrived in Warsaw in May 1918, and in June 1919 became the first nuncio in independent Poland. In 1922, after Benedict XV’s death, he was himself elected pope as Pius XI.

Significance

Benedict XV did not manage to stop the war, and for a long time his appeals were considered ineffective. The Treaty of London of 1915, under which Italy entered the war, even contained a secret clause excluding the Holy See from the future peace conference. Over time, however, his pontificate came to be judged more highly. The Vatican’s humanitarian aid and its consistent calls for peace meant that the Holy See emerged from the war with greater authority than it had when it went in. Benedict XV died on 22 January 1922.