BENEDICT XV, POPE. - Giacomo Della Chiesa, born in Genoa on 21 November 1854 to Giuseppe and Giovanna Migliorati. Of a marquessal family, descended from the dukes of Spoleto and sharing the same lineage as Callixtus II and Berengar II, he traced his ancestry to Anselm Della Chiesa, co-lord of Priocca in 1207, while through his mother he was related to Innocent VII. He pursued classical studies first at the Danovaro Giusso college, then at the seminary’s lyceum, and graduated in law in 1875 with a dissertation on “The Interpretation of Laws.” He entered the Capranica College in Rome that same year, earned a doctorate in theology, and received Holy Orders in 1878. After completing his courses at the Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics in 1882, he entered the Secretariat of State, where he served as private secretary to the nuncio, Monsignor Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro, who was created cardinal and named Secretary of State in 1887. Rampolla immediately called him to serve as a minutant for Ordinary Affairs and subsequently sent him on special missions to Vienna in 1889 and 1890. In 1901 he became Substitute of the Secretariat of State and professor of Diplomatics at the Academy where he had been a student. He continued this high office under the pontificate of Pius X until his appointment in 1907 as Archbishop of Bologna, receiving episcopal consecration from the same Pope on 22 December. Elevated to the Sacred College of Cardinals in the Consistory of 25 May 1914, he received the red hat and the title of Ss. Quattro Coronati on 28 May. Three months later, on 3 September, he was raised to the papal throne, taking the name Benedict XV in homage—so he said—to the illustrious predecessor in the See of St. Petronius and St. Peter, Prospero Lambertini.
Naturally vivacious in temperament, quick and sure in intuition, with an iron memory and a mind open to broad visions, and a magnanimous heart. Slender in stature, with slightly uneven shoulders and an irregular, changeable face, he revealed in his vivid, penetrating gaze such robust and noble spirit that it often transfigured his features into an expression of captivating grace and a bearing of venerable majesty. Inclined to wit and satire, of impetuous and even choleric disposition, he was quick to show gentle cordiality, obliging courtesy, and refined delicacy. Deeply pious, with a childlike abandonment to prayer, tenacious in affection, incapable of rancor, forgetful of every offense, he triumphed over aversion and criticism with regal generosity, confounding them, undisturbed, with open cheerfulness and solicitous preference for those who did not know how to be friends—almost as if in gratitude for the duty to exercise the virtue of forbearance and forgiveness. For such marked traits, at once commanding and attractive, he impressed upon souls the impression of a most vigorous personality, leaving a moving and indelible memory.
His unexpected election to the papacy did not daunt him, though the conditions of the Church, of the Holy See, and of the world were graver than ever. The “restorative in Christ” pontificate of Pius X had had to contend with the extreme efforts of social and political laicism, which had declared itself in France and, inspired by that example, had grown stronger everywhere, even in Spain. While the Church, in the harmony of the episcopate, the discipline of the clergy, the safeguarding against modernism, and above all in Eucharistic fervor, emerged strengthened, the Holy See in its relations with states suffered from a detachment that suggested a deliberate and hostile isolation. In the Vatican, fourteen nations were represented diplomatically, some more out of tradition and the convenience of observation and control than out of cordiality or devotion. This was the situation when a world conflict began, confronting the Church and Rome for the first time in centuries, and when the Holy See, having lost all temporal sovereignty, was deprived of any effective shield. What might have been advantageous in one sense, given the papacy’s neutral position, was rendered futile by the fact that world political consciousness was alien to recognizing the Pope’s high spiritual function beyond and above the conflicts. The lack of a state did not shield him from self-interested pressures contrary to his mission of peace and civilization, which he wished to remain impartial, while it hindered his communications with the Church. These communications would not enjoy the consideration and protection proper to a non-belligerent sovereign, while the necessary communion of thought and action between the episcopate and the Head of Catholicism should have been more urgent and uninterrupted, if only for what the religious life, moral conduct, and Christian civilization required from the pastoral mission and the papal magisterium during the scourge that was striking the peoples. Such a state of affairs, which for many aspects offered no precedent to draw upon, demanded not merely courage but heroism, and not merely intelligence but genius. This reality, superior in every respect to expectations, found in Benedict XV’s thought and labor the understanding and the apostolate adequate to II.
Benedict XV, in his first encyclical *Ad Beatissimi* (1 November 1914), outlined the program of his pontificate and revealed that fundamental unitary concept to which the historian must turn in order to treat it properly. As supreme moderator of the life and world of souls, he indicated that everything—morals, culture, labor, wealth, progress, politics and economics, justice and law—should be ordered toward God according to the doctrine of the Church, regarded in relation to humanity as mother and guide. His charity embraced the entire sphere of earthly life in all its ordered manifestations: from the individual to the family, to social class, to the nation, to international relations. From this universal maternity and magisterium, reflecting on earth the paternal providence of God, there derived and took on real religious and social consistency the brotherhood of men, the inescapable necessity of discipline among the faithful, and the Church’s constant love for those who had strayed from her or ignored her, yet were to return to her and learn to love and follow her. Thus all of existence, all human endeavor, was simplified by this intimate and vital relationship with the Church and by its supreme end—the glory of God and the salvation of souls—pursued by every means, in every field, the sole guarantee of reconstructive order that passed from the moral world to the material, from the realm of individual conscience to that of the collective life of peoples. From this document, the essence of his papal government—so he liked to say and insist—was exclusively religious, no less in the activities necessarily and continually political and social than in those ecclesiastical and moral. This essence was summed up in the words he wrote at the outset, on 23 September 1914, to Cardinal Dubillard: “Hoc unum velle et unice contendere ut Christi Ecclesiae per tot adversa gradienti, utile praebeamus ministerium,” words that echoed again a few hours before his death: “If the Lord still wishes me to work for His Church, I am always ready.”
Such premises reveal to us first and foremost the sentiment and spirit with which he confronted the world crisis, its sorrows and its ruins. For him, the Church of Christ was all that pain; all that disaster from which the war was bleeding tears and blood; all those immortal spirits opposed; all those oppressed upon whom force rose and violence pressed. The bloody conflict was not merely an immanent social phenomenon, but also moral and religious. He was under no illusions: the war had neither sprung up nor remained confined within the limits of a political and economic phenomenon. He saw in it «the conflagration of mortal elements fermented in materialism»; the crisis of thought and conscience of an age. To save society meant not only to halt its suicide but to raise it to Christian rebirth. Hence, from his very first encyclical, pronounced before the world, almost absorbed in the cult of violence, he condemned war as «the most hateful manifestation of the prevailing moral disorder» and indicated as remedies prayer, penance, the restoration of God’s rights, submission to the precepts of the Gospel and of the Church. What it meant, in that autumn of 1914, facing a Europe partly at arms, partly on the brink of war, amid the unchallenged triumph of material force, to be alone against all, against the idea and against the fact; alone against armed force, armed in turn solely with love.
Benedict XV’s plan was threefold: to invoke an end to the conflict by preparing a lasting peace; to humanize the war; and to alleviate all its sufferings. What he dared to do to reconcile the world, restoring within it the triumph of a justice inspired by charity and by a practical vision of the aspirations, needs, and political possibilities of peoples, and of a history that, twenty years later, would write another chapter, fully illuminating the providence of his efforts and invocations had they been heeded. In this field, his work could only be diplomatic and magisterial. The former is easier to recognize; the latter is not hard to infer from what he himself hinted in speeches and letters. A continuous work of exhortation and persuasion, which he took as an unassailable vocation, according to his famous words repeated to Achille Ratti, who recalled them on the eve of succeeding him on the papal throne: «They would silence me. The Vicar of Christ should not invoke peace. They will never seal my lips. Woe if the Vicar of the Prince of Peace were mute in the hour of storm! The spiritual and universal paternity with which I am invested makes it my precise duty to invite to peace the sons who are slaughtering one another from opposite barricades. I am and feel myself the spiritual father of the combatants on both sides. No one will be able to prevent the Father from crying out to his children: Peace, peace, peace!»
A work of counsel carried out on every occasion, by every possible means, and illustrated by his paternal appeal to peoples and governments in the first anniversary of the war, in his most solemn allocutions during the conflict, and in that famous note to the Heads of State of 19 August 1917, in which a thought hitherto hovering in the sphere of principles was concretized so as not to expose the balance of his impartial mission—directed solely to reconciliation—to any criticism amid the tumult of passions. The «note» urged a stable and honorable peace for all, to be achieved through mutual disarmament and obligatory arbitration, freedom of the seas, mutual remission of war expenses and credits, except in cases of justice and equity such as that of Belgium, whose independence was to be guaranteed; the evacuation of occupied territories; and the settlement of territorial claims according to the aspirations of peoples. This appeal culminated in the celebrated phrase he pronounced when international contention over Wilson’s Fourteen Points—broader but no more effective a paraphrase of the «note»—was intensifying: «Nations do not die!» This was the fertile seed of that Christian international law which the Second World War would bring to a more luminous development. And yet his charitable intent and diligent contribution to avert further wars, to shorten the one that threatened to engulf Europe, did not lack sectarian suspicions and opposition. Content only with divine comfort and the incomparable satisfaction that love brings, even when in vain and unrecognized, he remained steadfast, constant, and undisturbed amid adversities, ingratitude, and human rebellions; resigned to every refusal, ever eager to begin anew. Intent solely on the good he was accomplishing, he ever turned his tireless activity to supreme ends, never to particular interests, so that impartiality became his essential and unmistakable hallmark.
He strove to alleviate all sorrows. His was the greatest and most admirable work of paternal piety, Christian, social, and civic charity that the world may remember. It seems the labor of an age rather than of
BENEDETTO XV
LEBANON (1916–20) and the Christians of Syria and the East afflicted by disease, famine, and persecution hailed him as their most effective protector. And after the war, amid shattered altars, ruined factories, devastated fields; amid poverty, famine, epidemics, languishing youth, and metropolises and nations rendered impotent to live, his beneficent hand still stretched out. Russian refugees received his aid through the hands of the «Orthodox» metropolitan Anastasios; their starving children found refuge in Crimea, in a sanatorium bearing his name; persecuted schismatic clergy invoked and obtained his defense (1919), as had already been granted the appeal of American Jews (1916) during the massacres of Israelites in Europe. Later, Russia was dying of hunger amid scenes of horror and death. Politicians debated and procrastinated; Benedict XV declared: «It is the duty of every man to rush to where another man is dying» (1921). And his charity arrived first, once again, as it had in Austria, where not only were individuals wasting away but a state was languishing. Germany and Ireland (1920) and distant China (1921) were the object of his solicitude, while the entire world, seeing him again among the martyred and desolate children as once the Divine Master among the children, responded to his call launched in an encyclical (1920) for the children of Belgium, Central Europe, and Russia (1921). More than a hero of charity, he appeared the champion of civilization and human brotherhood. The statue erected to him in Constantinople (1920), placed among the infidels and spanning two continents, fully attests to this historical truth. And all this, amid countless secret and direct aids to individuals, families, and institutions, so that of so many requests, even the humblest, most distant, and unknown, none went unheard; many, indeed, were anticipated. Cardinal Gasparri noted that in this work of personal charity, Benedict XV had distributed eighty-two million lire.
BENEDETTO XV – Detail of the tomb in St Peter’s. Work by P. Canonica.
A man. Thousands of prisoners unfit for war (1914), prisoners who were fathers of large families, or who had spent more than eighteen months in captivity (1916), were restored to their homelands; civilian detainees were released (1915); entire deported populations were reunited with their families (1917); over 30,000 French, British, Belgian, and Austrian wounded were cared for by Switzerland (1915); Italians suffering from tuberculosis returned to recover in the mild climate of their homeland (1916); Sunday rest was secured for prisoners (1915); a consecrated grave was granted to Christians who died at the Dardanelles (1916); those populations struck by enemy invasion were given news of their loved ones (1915). The "Prisoners' Aid Office" in the Vatican Palace took on immense proportions: seven hundred thousand requests for information, forty thousand for repatriation, and five hundred thousand communications to families. Clergymen, nuncios, and bishops visited and inspected concentration camps, interceded, comforted, and provided aid. The Pope’s prayers and mediation reached everywhere, mitigating harsh discipline, commuting sentences, and saving the innocent. And though he sought—but did not obtain—the Christmas truce in the first year of war (1914), burial for the fallen in the field (1915), and the prohibition of aerial attacks beyond the war zone (1916), Poland (1915–17) and Belgium (1917) found in him their greatest benefactor. The devastated Balkans, Armenia—where a million of its children were massacred—and the Maronites of
BENEDETTO XV - Detail of the tomb in St. Peter’s. Work by P. Canonica.
He remained untiring in his care and labors, yet never neglected the immediate concerns of religious life and the life of the Church itself. While no new errors arose to challenge the defense of doctrine, and while the proscribed books, after the antimodernist struggle of Pius X, diminished in number and importance, his encyclical on St. Jerome (1919) regarding the method of biblical exegesis remains memorable, as does the continued enforcement of the antimodernist oath’s disciplinary norms and the vigilance councils. To the Czech-Slovak schism, influenced by the proximity of heterodoxy and its corrupt ecclesiastical customs, the Pope prescribed the most effective remedy in the diligent improvement of seminaries and the formation of the clergy—an endeavor to which he devoted particular care in the establishment of a dedicated Congregation, that of “Seminaries and Universities of Studies” (1915), whose rules, described as “pedagogically perfect and doctrinally admirable,” were issued to the seminaries of Italy. The personal imprint of the Pope is evident and preponderant in these measures. He promulgated the Code of Canon Law (1917), though he himself said he was merely reaping what his predecessor had sown, for from the beginning of his pontificate he had gathered the opinions of bishops on the initial drafts of this great work, from which the definitive labor then developed. He laid down the foundational principles of Christian discipline in his very first encyclical: harmony and obedience to the authority of bishops and the ecclesiastical hierarchy, mutual charity and piety—principles he reiterated in every conflict among Christian peoples, in every writing and discourse, in every counsel to priests and preachers. He composed touching prayers for the cessation of war, for the reunion of the Eastern Churches, for the invocation of God’s aid upon the peace congress, for the end of civil strife, and for the propagation of the faith. He extended to the whole Church the use of three Masses on All Souls’ Day (1915) and the feast of the Holy Family, restored with the Code the precept for St. Joseph and Corpus Christi, and approved the office for the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He instituted many provisions to foster religious fervor, as seen in the encyclicals marking the centenaries of St. Dominic, St. Francis, and Dante; in the briefs, letters, and acts promoting Eucharistic devotion, the domestic reading of the Gospels, the spread of devotion to the Sacred Heart and the Precious Blood; for the Rosary, Our Lady of Sorrows, the Queen of Peace, and the Madonna of Loreto; for St. Joseph and the fiftieth anniversary of his universal patriarchate; for the feasts of the archangels; for the canonizations of St. Joan of Arc, St. Gabriel of the Sorrowful Virgin, and St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1920); the beatifications of St. Joseph Cottolengo and Anne of St. Bartholomew (1917), of Anna Maria Taigi, Louise de Marillac, Oliver Plunket, the 22 Martyrs of Uganda, and the Ursulines of Valenciennes (1920); for the proclamation of St. Ephrem as a Doctor of the Church; and for all that treasury of pious wisdom which he celebrated at every jubilee, as with St. Jerome, St. Alphonsus, St. John Berchmans, and the Blessed Canisius, at every introduction of causes and proclamation of heroic virtues for other luminaries of the faith. His indefatigable zeal for the Catholic missions was manifested in the encyclical *Maximum illud*, in the founding of colleges in Rome, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, in the protection of the Pious Union of the Clergy for Missions, in the preparations for the third centenary of the *Propaganda Fide*, and in the generous subsidies granted to all missionaries. His ardent desire to bring separated brethren back to the Mother Church and his special predilection for the Eastern Churches are evidenced by the autonomy granted to the dedicated Congregation and the establishment of a Pontifical Institute, on which he wished “to keep personal watch.”
In harmony with papal traditions, his zeal for cultural and social progress was notable, as he saw in these fields fertile ground for a civil rebirth. Within the limits imposed by the universal crisis and his brief pontificate, he was a munificent patron of science and art. This is demonstrated by the founding of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan (1920), his generous contribution to the reconstruction of the library at Louvain (1918), the expansion of the School of Sacred Music in Rome (1915), the establishment of the Petriano Museum (1917), the enlargement of the Egyptian Museum (1915), the founding of the astrophotographic cabinet at the Vatican Observatory, and within the Apostolic Palace, the restoration of the Tapestry Workshop (1915), his extensive support for the musicians' guild, the restoration and decoration of the Sala Ducale (1917), the new seat of the administration (1917), the new quarter for the Mobile Guard (1922), the statue of the Madonna of Peace in Santa Maria Maggiore (1918), his donation to the Franciscan church in Ravenna (1921), and the favor and assistance granted to artists, especially the young, to works of art, and to schools in every country.
In the complex and turbulent social arena, he can be seen as a continuator of the thought of Leo XIII, whose doctrines he confirmed whenever major issues of economic justice touched upon the teaching of the Church. In the acute crisis following the war, his diagnosis of the threatening malady was as sure as his remedy was radical. For the pacification, balance, and social order, justice and equity alone are not enough «unless there occurs in minds and hearts the rebirth of those principles that made the world pagan, Christian», that is, with the victory over the passions. These are exploited «by the boundless love of wealth and by the profanation of the sacred, so that while on one side the accumulated treasures never suffice, on the other there is not a spirit of resignation, but rather envy that is impotent hatred and expectation of revenge together». It is therefore necessary to begin with an «individual reform» that is «a means to bring a breath of Christian life into society». This flourishes from a renewed spirit made simple, from that «spiritual childhood by which love is joyfulness, is like the need for joy to overcome them», opening the paths of Truth and making it desirable for oneself and for others. Hence comes social love of neighbor. Indeed, «the people are won back by an action that brings truth and charity, which can neutralize the contrary activity inspired by hatred and falsehood». To deviate from this principle is to allow love to degenerate into conflicts and violence, even in the name of just claims; this is a betrayal of the very civil order that is harmony, concord, and class collaboration; a fruit of that relationship between duties and rights, by which only the observance of the former legitimizes the assertion of the latter. And when bloody conflicts broke out, giving rise to new fratricidal struggles, the Pope summed up all the wisdom of this doctrine of Christian love in a famous prayer with which he implored God for humanity, that they might know how to repeat the Our Father, remembering that they constitute one family and are disposed to have their debts forgiven as each of them forgave their debtors.
This biographical sketch cannot be concluded, lest it remain incomplete, without turning to what particularly concerns Italy, where the work of the Holy See, though always having singular repercussions, had especially significant ones with Benedict XV, both for its importance and for the peculiarities of the moment. The «Roman Question» remained ever open, to which the Pope, like his predecessors, explicitly renewed the traditional protests, yet he found that its initial political harshness had been softened by the provisions of Pius X, who had effectively removed the *non expedit* and demanded the freedom and independence of the Holy See without temporalistic preconditions, thus reconciling the divergent currents of Catholics on this issue and bringing a more serene judgment to all political sectors. However, the Great War, like that of 1911 for the Italian conquest in Libya, had demonstrated the necessity of a solution. The episode of the occupation of Palazzo Venezia (1916) by the Italian state, which considered the seat of an embassy to the Vatican a pledge of war, and earlier, the exodus to Lugano of the diplomatic representatives to the Pope from the Powers at war with Italy (1915), were but the two most significant symptoms of the complications that the situation, already unsustainable in peacetime, was creating, in too many respects, during a war of such proportions. It suffices to consider the relations of the central government of the Church seated in the capital of a belligerent state with nations hostile to it, and the very teaching of the Pope on the moralization of war and his peace efforts, which were alternately accused, depending on the conflicting critiques of the parties involved, of partiality or hostility toward Italy and its allies. Benedict XV, while not ceasing to seize upon events as opportunities to draw Italy’s and the world’s attention to the unassailable claims of the Holy See, did so while reaffirming the possibility and confidence in resolutive agreements, and even mitigating, in favor of a more prompt advent of international peace, any new escalation of the dispute between the papacy and Italy. Cardinal Gasparri, Secretary of State, in an interview granted to *Corriere d’Italia* on June 28, 1915, declaring himself to be interpreting the Pope’s thought, affirmed that the Holy See awaited «a suitable arrangement for its situation not from foreign arms but from the triumph of those sentiments of justice that it hopes will increasingly spread among the Italian people in accordance with their true interests.» The impression
Of these assertions, the Pope’s efforts were all the more effective because it was well known that Germany and Austria, if victorious, would have brought the “Roman Question” to the Peace Conference, and that the Italian Government itself, fearing such influences, was firmly opposed to any papal intervention in the world’s reconciliation to which Benedict XV devoted all his purpose and effort. This impression explains how, during the Versailles Conference, Msgr. Cerretti, Secretary for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, could submit to the President of the Council and head of the Italian delegation at the Conference a draft resolution for settling the conflict between the Italian State and the Holy See, and how the Hon. Vittorio Emanuele Orlando accepted it (1919). It explains how the draft, interrupted by the resignation of the Cabinet, was taken up again by the new Prime Minister Francesco Saverio Nitti (who had already exchanged ideas on the subject with high prelates) and through direct negotiations with Cardinal Gasparri (1920); it explains, finally, how it was possible for a party of Italian Catholics and its strong group of deputies in Parliament to emerge and firmly establish itself in 1920 without any papal reservations. In 1919, addressing the convention of diocesan boards in Italy, he distinguished Catholic Action—reorganized and reunited since 1915—from “actions of Catholics” in the economic and political spheres, deeming these licit and commendable so long as they were guided by the highest principles of religion, morality, and Catholic social teaching, yet remaining the responsibility of citizens without involving the Holy See or the Church. Finally, he explicitly lifted the prohibition in force since 1870 against Catholic sovereigns visiting Rome, so that nothing on the part of the Holy See could be cited as an obstacle or difficulty to contacts and agreements between states after the wartime crisis, in the interest of peace and the concordant cooperation of peoples. This was another unresolved issue of international scope. By abolishing it, Benedict XV, in allowing heads of state to come to Rome, could repeat almost verbatim the words with which Pius X, in *Fermo Proposito*, justified the suspension of the prohibition on Italian Catholics voting. If the prohibition had been in place for the gravest reasons, for “no less grave reasons” and “all for the supreme good of society,” this, like that vote, was removed by the Pope.
Hence the understandable unanimous recognition by Italians of every persuasion of so magnanimous and beneficial an effort by the Pope when his earthly toil ended, leaving to history its serene and definitive judgment.
He fell ill with influenza-induced bronchitis on 18 January 1922. His frail constitution could not withstand II. He died on the 22nd, offering his life for peace. He had reigned for seven years, four months, and twenty days. The immense work he undertook—target of unjust criticism, venomous attacks, and sectarian hatred—already bore fruit in a universal esteem and admiration that grew ever greater. Proof of this was the fact that at his death 27 states were represented at the Holy See, including France (1920), which had broken relations with the Vatican during the Combes administration; Portugal (1918), which had been absent since the proclamation of the Republic; England (1915), which before 1870 had only a consular representative and then none at all; and China, which had never had any representation at all. This growing moral and political recognition was fully confirmed by the worldwide mourning that greeted his death. In every country, from every religious faith—even non-Christian, not excluding Jews and Muslims—and from every political persuasion, even the most extreme (including communists and anarchists), a plebiscite of tribute arose, echoed nobly from parliamentary rostrums, diplomatic circles, government benches, and heads of state, in unanimous homage to his genius, his impartiality, his love of truth, justice, and the brotherhood of peoples, and his compassion for their sufferings. Nothing more significant of the good that came to civilization from his papacy can be found than the literal citation of Benedict XV’s “Note to the Heads of State” made by Giuseppe Motta, President of the Assembly of the League of Nations, on 3 October 1924, when he declared that “if humanity should one day—perhaps still far off—succeed in abolishing war, it will owe this inestimable achievement to the system of arbitration as proposed by Benedict XV.” Of the prestige this brought to the Church, the historian Ludwig von Pastor wrote the same year: “Benedict XV, the most able diplomat, was perhaps the only one who could master the grave situations of the world war. He guided the barque of Peter with such surety through the stormy waves that engulfed three empires that, at his death, the prestige of the Holy See had grown in the eyes of all nations. This was due in large part to the magnificent work of charity he directed on behalf of the peoples of Europe most severely afflicted.” To crown such testimonies, there is that of Pius XI, who, in his first consistorial allocution, affirmed that his predecessor “governed the Church in such a way as to earn not only the praise of Catholics but also the admiration of his adversaries. While men raged against one another in hatred, he never ceased to inculcate peace and filled the world with the benefits of his charity. His memory therefore remains in benediction.”
During his pontificate, Benedict XV promoted to the episcopate his two successors: Achille Ratti on 6 June 1919, sending him first as apostolic visitor and then as nuncio to Poland, finally conferring the scarlet hat upon him; and Eugenio Pacelli on 23 April 1917, consecrating him with his own hands on 13 May and sending him as nuncio to Bavaria and later to Germany. He created 32 cardinals, 8 archiepiscopal sees, 26 episcopal sees, 3 abbacies and *prelature nullius*, 2 apostolic delegations (in Albania and Japan), 28 apostolic vicariates, and 8 apostolic prefectures.
In his iconography, the so-called Einsiedeln portrait by Giorgio Szoldatics stands preeminent, along with the recast statue of Constantinople by Pietro Canonica, to whom we also owe the tomb monument in St. Peter’s, in the Chapel of the Presentation, and the high bronze relief by Carlo Barberis on the tomb in the Vatican Grottoes.
Giuseppe Dalla Torre