Pope Benedict XV was created a cardinal only a few
months before his election as pope. Giacomo della Chiesa
by birth, he was a nobleman from Genoa and had served
as Archbishop of Bologna for seven years. Before that he
had worked in the Vatican Secretariat of State under the
same Cardinal Rampolla whose election to the papacy was
vetoed by the Emperor of Austria in 1903.
Benedict’s early experience in diplomacy stood him in
good stead as pope. Elected in August 1914, the first half
of his papacy was dominated by the First World War. The
pope observed a strict neutrality, condemning the war as a
crime against humanity, and gave responsibility for the war
to both sides. Consequently both sides viewed him with
suspicion, each side claiming that he favoured the other,
although the bishops of the Central Powers tried to claim
him as favourable to them. This led Benedict to take both
the German and the French bishops to task for waging
nationalistic propaganda.
The pope argued for a
negotiated peace rather than a dictated one and predicated
that the Treaty of Versailles was a prescription for future
war and that it a “consecration of hatred.”
Benedict achieved greater success after the war when he
reestablished diplomatic relations with both France and
Great Britain.
He also laid the groundwork for
normalization of relations between the Vatican and the
Italian State when he removed the papal prohibition against
participation in Italian elections.
With the establishment of the Congregation for the
Eastern Churches and the Papal Institute for Oriental
Studies he sought to ease relations with the Orthodox
Churches. And in 1917 he promulgated the Code of Canon
Law, which was in effect until the new Code came into
being in 1983.
The pope’s death in 1922 from influenza brought his
papacy to an early end: he was only 68 years old. Some
historians view him as a “transitional” pope, his reign
dominated by the Great War. However, Benedict’s
international policies really set the diplomatic course that
the Vatican would pursue throughout the 20