On Aug. 20, 1914, with World War I less than a month old, Pope Pius X died, and on Sept. 3, 1914, Benedict was elected pope, only four months after being created a cardinal. Crowned on Sept. 6, 1914, he possessed the diplomatic experience that the conclave had wanted. The first four years of Benedict's seven-and-a-half-year papacy were to be consumed by his ultimately unsuccessful attempts to stop a war that he condemned as "the suicide of civilized Europe."
Born Giacomo della Chiesa in Genoa 1854, the sixth child of an ancient but poor patrician family, Benedict was ordained in 1878, spent much of his life in the Vatican's diplomatic service and became undersecretary of state in 1901. In 1907, he became archbishop of Bologna.
He opened a Vatican office to reunite prisoners of war with their families, and he tried to persuade neutral Switzerland to take in any combatants who were suffering from tuberculosis. While the Vatican's bank balance was not healthy, he spent 82 million lire on relief work.
Benedict has been called "the pope of peace." In the title of John F. Pollard's biography, he is "the unknown pope." In the year that marks the centenary of the beginning of World War I, the millions dead will be remembered, the fall of dynasties discussed, and the consequences of the conflict pondered. It should be a time, too, when the heroic efforts of Benedict find a true appreciation.