Rev. John Kubuo
The name Benedict is interestingly a mixed baggage of positive and negative papal history ascribed to seventeen clergy, who were either popes or anti-popes of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.
One of them was imprisoned, another murdered, three were anti-popes, four had their appointments delayed by the Roman emperor, and eight were deposed, although some were subsequently reinstated. This confusion was not there in the beginning.
The Romans remembered that when St Peter, the first pope, was about to die, he appointed a slave, Linus, as his successor. And when Linus was dying, appointed a man called Cletus, with the consent of all the Christians in Rome. But somewhere between Clement’s successor, Evaristus, and a pope called Hyginus (the eighth successor of Peter), the whole group of Roman Christians did the appointing of their head – probably because the incumbent leader, or pope, had been taken away to be killed without warning. When this happened, as it often did, the Christians called on their remembrance of what the early followers of Jesus had done when Judas Iscariot left them: they gathered together, prayed, then held a one-man election to replace the suicide, accepting the outcome as the decision of Jesus, because he had told them through Peter, that “Whatever you allow on earth, will be what Heaven allows.” So, the election process in the Roman group was equally simple, and had only two conditions: only a Roman Christian could vote and only a Roman citizen could be chosen. This simple election process was followed in the early centuries whenever a dying pope did not nominate his successor. Things began to change though, when Constantine first established the Bishop of Rome in full power in Western Europe. The Popes received from him considerable real estate, extensive judicial authority, much liquid cash, control over the armed forces, and political dominance. In short, because of Constantine, the bishop of Rome became a monarch and his church a monarchy. Then the method of electing the pope came under the influence of the emperor. Within a few years of Constantine’s conversion, the election of a pope had become an occasion for bitter, sometimes violent clashes. Electioneering time usually began after the death of a pope. Sometimes, his last days and dying hours were filled with factional disputes, the nobles and the Roman senate against the Bishops, various ambitious papal candidates with their followings of family, kinsmen, and friends, one against the other. Vicious enmities were created. Blood was shed. Lives were taken. For example, at the election of Pope Damasus I in 366 A.D., thirty-seven corpses littered the environs of the Liberian Basilica after a fracas between the followers of Damasus and his archrival, Ursinus. And that is the setting in which the Benedicts were elected to the throne of St Peter, progressively with the active intervention of the Holy Spirit. From Benedict I to Benedict XV Benedict I, the 62nd Pontiff, reigned from 2nd June 575 to 30th July 579. The little that is known about him is that he consecrated 21 bishops during his pontificate, and gave out the papal estate Massa Veneris to Abbot Stephen of St. Mark’s. He ruled the Church during a period made calamitous by invasion and famine. While attempting to solve these problems, he died during a siege of Rome by the Lombards. St Benedict II became the number 81 pontiff for less than a year, from June 26, 684 to May 8, 685. He was widely known for his humility, gentleness and love for the poor. Benedict II confirmed his predecessor’s support of the Third Council of Constantinople (680-681) and sent a delegate to Spain with copies of the acts of the council and Leo II’s letters. But the largely independent visigothic church of Spain did not approve the acts of the council without first subjecting them to an exhaustively analytical examination at the 4th Council of Toledo (684). When the Archbishop of Toledo learned that the Pope had been verbally critical of some passages in a profession of faith that he sent to Benedict II after the council, he sent a blistering protest to the Pope. Benedict III succeeded Leo IV, to become the 104th pope from September 29, 855 to April 17, 86 858. It happened that Hadrian, a cardinal-priest of San Marco was elected pope but he declined. Benedict, the pious and learned cardinal of San Callisto was chosen but he too, resisted, and took refuge in his titular church of San Callisto. The crowd followed him and conducted him to the Lateran Palace, where he was installed without being consecrated. A certain Anastasius suddenly surfaced to usurp the throne of St. Peter but after three days of anarchy, Benedict III clearly won wide popular support and was consecrated Pope. One interesting side note to Benedict III’s pontificate concerns the legendary Pope Joan. In one medieval version of the legend, Leo IV was succeeded not by Benedict III but by a Joan Anglicus, who is said to have reigned for two years, seven months and four days, and who in fact, was a woman. As the story goes, she was a native of Mainz. After a brilliant career as a student in Athens, she came to Rome, where she astonished people with her learned lectures and edifying life. Upon the death of Leo IV, she was unanimously elected Pope. Her secret, however, was disclosed when she gave birth to a child while riding in procession from St. Peter’s to the Lateran. In another version of the legend, she succeeded Pope Victor III in 1087, but there is simply no contemporary evidence for either version (cf. Richard P. McBrien, Lives of the Popes, Harper San Francisco, 1997, P.138). What about Benedict IV? He was the 117th occupant of the Chair of Peter, from February 900to July 903. Very little is known about his pontificate except that it occurred at the time when the Roman Church was torn apart by partisan conflict between the supporters and enemies of the late pope Formusus (891-896). Although Damasus was a man of exceptional intelligence, ability and even sanctity, he made some bitter political enemies, including his successor, Stephen VI (VII). Under pressure from the emperor and his mother, Stephen ordered Formosus’s body to be exhumed, nine months after his death, and put on trial over which Stephen himself presided. A deacon acted as defence attorney. Obviously, the defence was insufficient. The deceased pope was found guilty and his body was mutilated before being thrown in the river Tiber. Benedict IV reigned at this darkest period of papal history, during which division in the Church became the major factor in several subsequent papal elections in which pro-Formosus and anti-Formosus were pitted against each other. It is no wonder that there has never been a Formosus II, although Cardinal Pietro Barbo had to be dissuaded from taking the name in 144 and to Paul II instead. Benedict V was the 132nd pope, but his one-month long pontificate was canonically dubious because another claimant to the papacy, Leo VIII, was still alive. When John XII died on May 14, 964, Benedict V was elected pope on May 22, against the wishes of Emperor Otto I. The emperor simply laid siege to the city of Rome, threatened the people, who handed over Benedict V to him. On June 23, Otto immediately ordered a synod to hold at the Lateran Palace, which condemned Benedict V as a usurper, stripped him of his pontifical vestments and insignia, and had his pastoral staff or crozier broken over his head, as Benedict V laid prostrate. The emperor allowed Benedict V to retain the rank of deacon but deported him to Hamburg, where the local bishop treated him with courtesy and dignity. The tale continues Benedict VII became the 135th pontiff from January 19, 973 to July 974. When his protector, Emperor Otto I died, Benedict VI was seized, imprisoned and strangled to death by order of the anti-pope Boniface VII. Benedict VII was the 135th pontiff from October 974 to July 10, 983. He furthered the cause of Monasticism, and acted against Simony, specifically in an encyclical letter in 981 forbidding the exaction of money for the conferring of any Holy Order. Although Benedict VII’s rule was peaceful he is judged, however, to have been mistaken when in an agreement with Emperor Otto, he dissolved the bishopric of Merseburg (981). The closing of this outpost among the Slavs is considered to have been a setback in the conversion of Central Europe. Benedict VII and Otto worked harmoniously together and died in the same year. Over to the laymen Benedict VIII, the 143rd pope, was the first in a series of three laymen elected consecutively to the papacy. He established himself from the outset as a political and even military pope. Elected on May 17, 1012, he was given minor and major sacramental Orders and consecrated as Bishop of Rome on May 18. His brother Romanus (later Pope John XIX) assumed the reigns of civil government in Rome. Later, at a synod in Pavia (1022), the emperor and the pope together pushed through legislation prohibiting clerical marriage and the sales of Church offices. Benedict IX was the third layman to be elected and the 145th Pope from October 21, 1032. He was three times pope from 1032 to 1044, from April to May 1045, and from 1047 to 1048, after three depositions from office in what became the most confusing pontificates in all of papal history. When John XIX died under suspicious circumstances in 1033, a relative of John took his own twelve year-old son, called Theophylact, and had him consecrated pope Benedict IX. The spectacle of this 12 year-old issuing excommunications, giving his papal blessings, was ludicrous enough (cf. Malachi Martin, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church, Secker and Warburg, London, 1981, P.132). He excommunicated ecclesiastical leaders who were hostile to him. His embarrassing conduct provoked the Romans to insurrection. He fled Rome and in January 1045 was succeeded by Sylvester III. But Sylvester was quickly driven out by Benedict’s brothers, who replaced him with Gregory VI. But Benedict IX reappeared in Rome in 1048, and installed himself on November 8, only to be driven out and replaced by Damasus II. A Reform Benedict X was antipope from April 1058 to January 1059. His expulsion from the papal throne was followed by a reform in the law governing papal elections. The new law, enacted in 1059, established an electoral body, which subsequently became the sacred college of Cardinals, charged with the sole responsibility of choosing a pope. Blessed Benedict XI became the 192nd pope, elected on October 22, 1303. He chose the name Benedict, after his predecessor’s baptismal name, as a show of support and solidarity with the powerful but tragic Boniface VIII. The new pope had been one of two cardinals who had faithfully stood with Boniface during the assault upon him at anagni. Benedict XI immediately lifted Boniface VIII’s excommunication from the heads of the two Collona cardinals, but without restoring their properties or their cardinalatial ranks. Benedict XII was the 195th successor of the Throne of Peter and reigned from January 8, 1335 to April 25, 1342. He had come into office with a reputation as a learned theologian. The previous Pope, John XXII, on two occasions congratulated him for his efforts in eradicating heresy from his diocese. It was thanks to Benedict XII that a controversy about the beatific vision was settled. John XXII had speculated that the saints did not see God face–to-face immediately after death or not until after the final judgement. But Benedict XII ended the dispute by issuing a bull, Benedictus Deus (1336), in which he formulated the Church’s teachings that the souls of the just are granted the vision of seeing God face-to-face immediately after death. Benedict XII attempted to reform the religious orders through the imposition of stringent constitutions. These rigorous measures aroused much hostility, and most of his reforming works was unfortunately undone by his successors. He retained the papacy at Avignon without returning it to Rome as the Romans had hoped he would, but sent money for the repairs of the neglected churches in Rome. The Double Popes At this point, we need to be more careful with the treatment of the next four popes, because there were two Benedict XIIIs and two Benedict XIVs, two of them legitimate and two of them illegitimate. Benedict XIII was antipope from 1394 to 1423 who reigned in Avignon in opposition to the reigning popes in Rome, during the West Schism (1378 – 1417), when the Roman Catholic Church was split by national rivalries claiming the papal throne. The Schism began in 1378 with the election of Clement VII in opposition to Pope Urban VI. Benedict gave his allegiance to Clement, and when Clement died, Benedict succeeded him, because the Cardinals thought he would voluntarily resign to end the Schism. But this was not to be. So, 18 of his 23 cardinals deserted him and even when the Council of Pisa declared Benedict XIII deposed, he did not submit until his death. Benedict XIII was succeeded by another antipope Benedict XIV from 1425 to 1433. He had to counter another antipope in the person of Clement VIII. Benedict XIV so secretly conducted his office that even his residence was uncertain, and he thus became known as the “Hidden Pope.” The legitimate Benedict XIII was elected the 243rd Pontiff from May 29, 1724 to February 21, 1730. In spite of his age (75 when elected), he consecrated churches, visited the sick, administered the sacraments, and even gave religious instructions. He canonized saints, including John of the Cross (d. 1591) and Aloysius Gonzaga (d.1591). As a scholar, he III wrote many theological works. The legitimate Benedict XVI was elected after the longest conclave in modern times (six months). He became the 245th pope, from August 17, 1740 to May 3, 1758. He wrote the first Papal Encyclical, Ubi Primum (1940), on the duties of bishops. His intelligence and moderation won praise even among deprecators of the Roman Church at a time when it was beset with criticisms from philosophers of the Enlightenment and its prerogatives were being challenged by absolutist monarchs. Typical of his pontificate were his promotion of scientific learning and his admonition to those in charge of drawing up the Index Librorum Prohibitorum ( index of Forbidden Books) to act with restraint. Two months after his election, Benedict XIV established a congregation to select worthy men as bishops and the following month, another congregation to answer bishops’ questions directly to the Holy See. He promoted and improved clerical training, encouraged Episcopal residentiality and pastoral visitation. Although Benedict XVI was a man of his time theologically and spiritually, many Protestants and agnostic scholars respected him for the breadth of his scholarly interests. He founded four scholarly academies, purchased manuscripts and books for the Vatican library, and improved the University of Rome. Montesquieu (d.1755) described him as “the scholars’ pope”. Possessing a lively wit, Benedict XIV corresponded with many great men of his age, including Voltaire, who dedicated his tragedy (MAHOMET) to him. Benedict XV & XVI Finally, Benedict XV was elected the 256th Pontiff from September 3, 1914 to January 22, 1922, during the First World War. After the war, Benedict XV pleaded for reconciliation among the nations and gave general support to the League of Nations. On June 28, 1917, he promulgated the new code of Canon Law, whose revision had been initiated by his predecessor, Pius X. only two months after his election in 1903, Pius issued an encyclical in which he announced his determination to protect the Catholic clergy from “the snares of modern scientific thoughts.” What he was referring to was primarily the application of new techniques to the study of scriptures – techniques which revealed that the teachings of the Bible, including those of the New Testament, did not record events with the same kind of literal accuracy as modern historians do. This implied that even the Gospel narratives could not always be accepted at face level, which in turn suggested to some people that many of the Church’s dogmas might need to be revised in the light of a more accurate understanding of the evangelists’ true meaning. Thus the French priest, Alfred Loissy, denied that Christ had intended to institute sacraments or even to found a church. In July 1907, a decree entitled Lamentabili condemned a collection of 65 propositions grouped together under the heading of modernism – a most unfortunate choice of words, since it could easily be interpreted to mean that the Church was opposed in principles to all modern ideas. What Lamentabili particularly objected to was the assertion, expressed or implied, that the very concept of religious dogma is incompatible with the discoveries of modern scholarship. Two months later, in the encyclical Pascendi, Pius X ordered the establishment in each diocese, of a committee to guard against the spread of Modernist ideas. And in 1910, he ordered every Catholic bishop, priest, seminary professor, and religious superior in the world, to take an anti-modernist oath. Loissy and several others were excommunicated, and many scholars were forced to make formal abjurations of their teachings. The catch But the worst aspect of this anti-modernist crusade was that it set loose within the Church hundreds of what can only be described as intellectual vigilantes. The most notorious of these was Monsignor Umberto Benigni, an official of the Vatican secretariat of state, who created a clandestine international organisation dedicated to destroying the reputations of those whom it suspected of modernist tendencies but whose guilt could not be proved. Members of the organization, the Sodalitium Pianum, operated secretly and communicated with one another in code. They used the columns of local Catholic publications to vilify writers, professors and Churchmen who deviated in any way from the Sodalitium’s interpretation of Orthodoxy. And they transmitted excerpts from articles and speeches by people of whom it disapproved to Rome, where Benigni published them, along with defamatory commentaries in his own newspaper. The Sodalitium also channelled information to the Holy Office, the modern successor to the inquisition, which kept detailed secret dossiers on everyone even remotely suspected of having Modernist sympathies. Since it was never completely clear what the term “Modernism” actually referred to, the Sodalitium and the Holy Office were able to intimidate almost every Catholic engaged in scholarly pursuits. No one was burned alive by the Sodalitium, but its methods were in some respect, even more vicious than those of the medieval inquisition. Its victims, many of whom were not even aware that they were under suspicion, were dismissed from teaching posts, refused ecclesiastical promotions, and exposed to vicious and anonymous public calumnies. Since they had not been formally accused of anything, they found it impossible to clear their reputations. Even worse, perhaps, with the chilling effects which all of this had on Catholic intellectual life – especially in seminaries, where original research in philosophy, Church history and scripture practically ceased. The Flaw The existence and activities of the Sodalitium Pianum were finally brought to light during World War I, when the German army discovered some of its documents and a copy of its secret code in the Belgian city of Ghent. Pope Benedict XV, who succeeded Pius, ordered the group disbanded in 1921, bringing the worst features of this reign of terror to an end (cf. William A Herr, This our Church, The Thomas More Press, Chicago, 1986, P. 292 ff). On the missionary front, Benedict XV pursued a more creative course, urging in his encyclical, Maximum Illud (1919) that missionaries receive better spiritual and theological preparation and that missionary bishops form a native clergy as quickly as possible and never place the interests of their native countries ahead of the pastoral needs of the people they serve. Perhaps the most important and abidingly relevant achievement of his pontificate occurred within two months of his election. On November 1, 1914, he issued the first encyclical letter, Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum, in which he called a halt to the internecine warfare between the so-called integralist Catholics and progressive Catholics that had developed and intensified during the previous pontificate. The Pope insisted, without using the name intergralist, that the noun “Catholic” did not need a qualification by “fresh epithets”. In the end, he was a pope dedicated to healing and reconciliation. It thus seems that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger had Benedict XV in mind, when he chose to be called Benedict XVI. What in Benedict XV Inspired Benedict XVI? On April 20, 2005, Joseph Ratzinger, was elected the 263rd Pope of the Catholic Church and took the name Benedict XVI in homage to Benedict XV, who had inspired him. What was really the content of the inspiration? It is possible to identify three pointers, namely, ethics in relation to society, politics and economics. Ethics and Society When Benedict XV reviewed the causes of conflict in the society, he attributed it to the lack of solidarity, contempt of authority, injustice, and the making of material prosperity the end of life (AD BEATISSIMI, 5). There had been some serious talk about brotherhood among nations, but it lacked the foundation in Christ and so was seldom evident in practice (Ibid, 6, 7). It also lacked the cohesion that could be given to it by Christian belief (Ibid 12), because the love of wealth undermined people, made ruthless those seeking it, and relentless those who had it and intended to hold unto it at all cost (Ibid, 13, 14). However, if human beings had put their first hope in imperishable goods, and not perishable, they would have true happiness (Ibid 17), Benedict XV declared. His directions of the Church’s charitable works during World War I, and his search for an end to hostilities through negotiation, showed that his message of solidarity of all in Christ was sincere and practical. In his early writings, Cardinal Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI) sought to clarify precisely how the Church, which is Holy, could exist in a world in which people have put their hopes on perishable goods. For Benedict XVI, the word “holy” does not apply in the first place to the holiness of human persons but to the divine gift which bestows “holiness in the midst pf human unholiness. The Church is not called ‘holy’ because its members, collectively and individually, are holy, sinless men – this dream, which appears afresh in every century, has no place in the waking world of our text, however movingly it may express a human longing which man will not abandon until a new heaven and a new earth really grant him what this age will never give him. Even at this point, we can say that the sharpest critics of the Church in our time secretly lived on this dream and, when they find it disappointed, bang the door of the house shut again and denounce it as deceit” (cf. Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, Herder and herder, New York, 1970, P. 263). Ethics and Political Society Benedict XV was accommodating to the needs of the Italian State and started the reconciliation process which was to enable a lasting agreement to be made with it. The experience of the First World War gave him a better insight into the needs of practical politics. He opened the way to the active participation of the Italian Catholics in the political life of their country when he approved Don Sturzo’s plan for an Italian Popular Party, the PARTITO POPULARE ITALIANO in 1918. In international politics, Benedict XV was made a major contributor as a peace-maker, during the 1914-1918 war, and as a conciliator after it. His encyclical, Ad Beatissimi, appealed for a better way of settling international disputes, other than by force. And in another letter, PACEM DEI MUNUS (May 20, 1920), he appealed for the abandonment of hatred and a just post-war settlement (PDM, 9, 14). Fifty years after, (today) Benedict XVI has taken the argument a step further. He wrote; “A bitterness that only destroys stands self condemned. A slammed door can, it is true, become a sign that shakes up those inside” (Cf. Ratzinger, Op Cit, p.266). Ethics and Economic Society Benedict XV stressed the central errors and evils of liberal capitalism and its worship of wealth (AB, 5-7), because those whose loyalty is to mammon quite naturally cast anxious eyes on properties belonging to others. This vice is a strong desire to have the possessions of others. So disastrous is it that the last of the Ten Commandments prohibits it, the only prohibition that concerns an attitude rather than an action. It often accompanies envy, which is a discontent at or resentment of another’s good fortune. Envy may even act in a more straightforward, less devious way, simply by striving to take what it desires from those it envies. It accomplishes its end by practising one of the many forms of theft. How did Ratzinger see the role of the Church in the evils of Liberal Capitalism? He wrote, “In a world torn apart she (the Church) is to be a sign and means of unity, she is to bridge nations, races and classes and unite them. How often she has failed in this, we do not know: even in antiquity it was unable to prevent strife between the Christian nations, and today she is still not succeeding in so uniting rich and poor that the excess of the former becomes the satisfaction of the latter – the ideal of sitting at a common table remains largely unfulfilled. Yet even so one must not forget all the imperatives that have issued from the claim of Catholicity, above all, instead of reckoning up the past, we should face the challenge of the present and try in it not only to profess Catholicity in the Creed but to make it a reality in the life of our torn world” (Ratzinger, Op Cit, P.28). In fact, a brief analysis of the above three ideas are enough to lead us to the conclusion that like Benedict XV, the Pontificate of Benedict XVI will be one of peace, reconciliation and “sincere dialogue”. It will come as no surprise, if Benedict XVI will develop an understanding of faith that finds its primary approbation not in passive acceptance of dogma nor in progressive adaptation to the modern world, but that the Church will become the only thing it was ever really meant to be, namely, the body of Christ, the vantage point that makes all things possible to those who accept the faith.
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