NEWS STORY: What Does the Name Benedict Portend? Perhaps a Focus on Europe

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) In trying to predict the intentions of a new pope, many religious leaders and scholars agree: Look to his name. When Germany’s Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger stood on the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square on Tuesday (April 19), he became Benedict XVI, a name that evokes a legacy of defending […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) In trying to predict the intentions of a new pope, many religious leaders and scholars agree: Look to his name.

When Germany’s Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger stood on the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square on Tuesday (April 19), he became Benedict XVI, a name that evokes a legacy of defending the faith in Europe. It was last chosen by a pope who labored in vain to end World War I.


“It is significant that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger chose the name Benedict. It is a name not used since the reign of Benedict XV (1914-22),” said Maureen Tilley, associate professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton in Ohio. “Benedict XV desired to be remembered as the pope of peace who tried to restore European civilization to a peaceful, almost idealized past.”

Born an Italian noble, Pope Benedict XV was remembered most for his unsuccessful efforts to end World War I, which he deemed “the suicide of Europe” as it split the country’s Catholics down political lines.

In Europe, each warring side believed Benedict secretly favored the other. The Vatican was subsequently excluded from the Paris peace conference in 1919 despite Benedict’s repeated attempts to negotiate. Still, Benedict was successful in establishing a Vatican bureau to help all prisoners of war contact their families.

Tilly added that Ratzinger, the first German pope elected since Adrian VI in 1522, seemingly chose the name “to portend a crusade to recapture Europe for the church.”

Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, archbishop of Vienna, said on Vatican Radio that when Ratzinger revealed to the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel his choice of name, “he recalled jokingly that Benedict XV had a brief pontificate.” Ratzinger turned 78 last Saturday, his age fueling speculation that he was chosen as a “transitional pope” between John Paul II and a younger man who might serve longer.

Schoenborn said that Ratzinger also told the cardinals that “Benedict XV was the pope of peace in the difficult period of the war.” Ratzinger referred, said Schoenborn, to St. Benedict of Norcia, “patron (saint) of Europe and a man of great faith.” He also praised the Benedictine Rule “to put Christ before everything.”

The need to evangelize Europe for Catholicism probably weighed heavily on Ratzinger’s mind as he chose his papal name, according to Russell Shaw, former press secretary for the Washington-based National Conference of Catholic Bishops.


According to Shaw, the life of St. Benedict (480-547) also gives clues.

“He launched the monastic movement in Western Europe and in doing so, he is seen to have contributed very significantly to the Christian faith and to evangelism and to Europe,” said Shaw, who is now an author and a journalist. “I think the symbolic significance is the evangelization and re-evangelism of Europe to which Pope Benedict XVI is surely committed, and it is a reminder of the Christian roots of European culture itself.”

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The legacy of Benedict XIV, who reigned during the Enlightenment, from 1740 to 1758, echoes this commitment to re-establishing the church in Europe, Shaw said.

“He was able to uphold faith in the face of the challenge of the Enlightenment,” Shaw said. “It’s not hard to see how the pope might see parallels between the situation that he faces in today’s highly secularized post-Christian Europe and the challenges that Pope Benedict XIV faced in his day dealing with the skepticism and rationalism of the Enlightenment.”

In fact, the last five popes named Benedict, according to Francesco D. Cesareo, dean of the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts at Duquesne University, tried to reconcile divisive factions within the church, and worked to reform Europe. “If the name Benedict means anything, there is a pattern there that we may see emerge.”

At a news conference held Wednesday (April 20) by seven U.S. cardinals at the Pontifical North American College, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago said that just as Pope John Paul II was chosen 26 years ago when “some difficult challenges came from the East,” Ratzinger was chosen today when the challenges are from a de-Christianized West.

In his name choice, the 265th pope appears to be keenly aware of the man he is following, a man many are already calling “John Paul the Great.”


“Benedict XV was a short-term pope back in WWI, and Ratzinger is such a student of history that that would not have escaped him,” said Jim Post, president of Voice of the Faithful, a lay group that focuses on sexual abuse of children within the Catholic Church. “His first words were about the great papacy of John Paul II, so he knows his place in the history of the church and that is to help build a bridge from the 20th to the 21st century.”

MO/PH END RNS

_ Peggy Polk contributed to this story from Rome.

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