The Benedicts
From Brian Todd
CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- He calls himself a "simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord." But the new pope's choice of a name is a surprise to one church historian.
"Although there've been many Benedicts, there's never been a great Benedict in the past," says Catholic University historian Ken Pennington.
Consider his predecessor in name. Pope Benedict XV was widely known as a moderate, who quelled a campaign started by his immediate predecessor to crack down on church reformists.
"Benedict was a pope who tried to bring the church into the modern age. And he did it relatively successfully," Pennington says.
But for Benedict XV, the pontificate was dominated by World War I.
An Italian, born Giacomo della Chiesa, he was elected to the papacy right after the war broke out in 1914.
He called it the "suicide of civilized Europe" and did everything he could to end the destruction.
"He attempted to bring both sides to the peace table unsuccessfully. And unfortunately, both sides were enormously suspicious of him for doing it," Pennington says.
The major powers largely ignored an elaborate peace plan Benedict drew up, and he was given virtually no role in postwar negotiations.
Benedict tried to improve Vatican relations with France after the war by canonizing the French heroine, Joan of Arc.
He died of pneumonia in 1922.
Other pope Benedicts date back to the year 575.
One of them, Benedict the VI, was strangled to death on orders from a rival aristocratic Roman family.
Benedict the IX, selected pope as a teenager, was considered so lacking in moral restraint that he was forced out of Rome twice, reigned three separate times and ended up selling his papacy to a rival.
But that was almost 10 centuries ago.
And historians believe it's the legacy of Benedict XV -- his spirit of unity and peace -- that the man formerly known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger seeks to emulate.
