The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (review)

The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914-1922) and the Pursuit of Peace. By John F. Pollard. (London: Geoffrey Chapman. 1999. Pp. xv, 240. £16.99 clothbound; £12.95 paperback.)

Benedict XV (1854-1922), born Giacomo Della Chiesa, was probably one of the most capable and best prepared for his high office of all of the Roman pontiffs of the last two centuries. Yet of the ten popes who have held the papal office since Pius IX's election in 1846 we known much less about him than we do about all the others, except for John Paul I, who died shortly after his election in 1978. Benedict XV's pontificate was to be obscured by the great catastrophe of World War I and the widespread political disorders that followed it.

Like Leo XIII (1878-1903) and Pius XII (1939-1958) Benedict XV came from an aristocratic and urban background and from an earlier career in diplomacy. Before leaving his native city of Genoa he took a doctorate in civil law at its university. He then went on to Rome to study for the priesthood and next to enter the Gregorian University, where he would take doctorates in theology and canon law. However, the turning point in his career would come when he met Msgr. Mariano Rampolla, who would soon serve as the papal nuncio to Spain (1881-1886) and then become the papal secretary of state in 1887. Rampolla brought the young priest with him to Madrid to serve as his secretary and later took Della Chiesa into the secretariat of state after he became its head. Della Chiesa eventually secured the position of under secretary in that department, an important position in it. However, Rampolla suffered a deep tragedy in his career and life when Cardinal Puzyna of Cracow in Austria cast a veto ballot against him in the papal election of 1903. Cardinal Puzyna had made use in the election of a right that the Holy See had conferred on the Habsburg dynasty several centuries earlier.¹ Naturally enough, Della Chiesa's career also experienced a setback because of his patron's historic defeat.

The author is undoubtedly right in saying that the seemingly serious setback to Della Chiesa's career in 1903 actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Old foes eager to push him out of Rome were apparently responsible for his appointment as archbishop of Bologna in central Italy in 1907. It would give him experience in domestic church administration to put alongside of his experience in diplomacy. He took up his new duties with the utmost seriousness and determination. His archdiocese contained nearly 500 parishes of which 100 were in the mountains and could only be reached on horseback. By December, 1913, he had visited all but sixty-five of them. He was certainly a concerned and active ordinary.

His biographer implies, however, that the new archbishop had basically old ideas in his approach to modern social problems. The region in which his archdiocese lay, earlier part of the old papal states, was still mainly agricultural. While the agrarian and mercantile upper classes were usually well off, the tenant peasants, sharecroppers, and landless laborers often lived in poor circumstances. Trying to counteract the Social Democratic call to the working classes that they should engage in class conflict, the Archbishop preached the doctrine that the class system was of divine making and could not be altered. Still he did also preach that employers had to be just to their workers, and he early said that workers had a right to form and join class organizations. The problem here, in my judgment, was that organizers would have had to virtually start from scratch in setting up those organizations.

When most historians have referred to Benedict XV they have usually done so in connection with his proposal of August, 1917, to end World War...