Anti-war pontiff inspires Ratzinger

Victor Simpson, The Vatican

To honour him, Joseph Ratzinger chose the same name.

Ratzinger told cardinals he wanted to pay homage to Benedict XV, known for tireless efforts to help refugees and reunite a world divided by the Great War, an archbishop said.

The new Pontiff, Benedict XVI, felt his namesake “had done much for reconciliation among peoples”, Berlin Cardinal Georg Maximilian Sterzinsky said yesterday after attending the conclave. Ratzinger also was close to the late John Paul II, another peace-loving Pontiff. John Paul openly opposed the US-led war in Iraq.

Choosing a new name is a Pontiff’s first significant act in office, and it provides clues about the kind of leader he aspires to be.

Benedict XV, pontiff from 1914 to 1922, had the difficult task of providing leadership for Roman Catholic countries pitted against each other during the First World War, each claiming a just fight and praying for victory. His neutrality, and repeated protests against weapons such as poison gas, angered both sides. He worked to help the war’s innocent victims and came up with a seven-point peace plan. It failed, but some of his proposals were included in Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, the US president’s wartime call for peace in January 1918.

The Italian-born Pope was punished for his neutrality by being excluded from 1919 talks at Versailles outside Paris, where a peace treaty was signed.

Elsewhere, his work was honoured: Muslim Turkey erected a statue in Istanbul, honouring “the benefactor of all people, regardless of nation or creed”.

John-Peter Pham, a Vatican expert who worked at the Holy See from 1992 to 2002, said Benedict XV was “in many respects the first modern Pope”.

“Benedict XV’s efforts to mediate the Great War as well as his humanitarian outreach, while also embracing the Orthodox and Muslims, is what was for his time an unprecedented choice,” said Pham, now a university professor.

Ratzinger may also have been thinking of St Benedict, a monk who died in the sixth century. The saint was the founder of Western monasticism.