VATICAN CITY, APRIL 19, 2005 (Zenit.org).- In choosing the name Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger links his pontificate to two great evangelizers, says an observer.
Bishop Cipriano Calderon, retired vice-president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, said in statements to ZENIT: «The novelty of this Pontiff lies already in the name chosen: He succeeds Benedict XV, who chose this name in honor of St. Benedict, patron of Europe and great evangelizer of his time.»
«If Benedict evangelized the first Medieval Age, Benedict XV evangelized the modern age, and now Benedict XVI will be the evangelizer of the new millennium,» explained the prelate.
Pope Benedict XV, Giacomo della Chiesa, whose pontificate ran 1914-1922, succeeded Pius X as World War I was beginning.
In his programmatic encyclical «Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum» he appealed for peace and analyzed the causes of war.
One of his main objectives was the formation and sanctification of the clergy.
During the war he engaged in intense aid activity and promulgated the Code of Canon Law.
In the ecumenical field, he established the octave of prayer for Christian unity in the Catholic Church in 1916. It was Benedict XV who said «the Church is not Latin, or Greek, or Slav, but Catholic: There is no difference among her children, whether they are Greek, Latin, or Slav, or of another national group.»
To Benedict XV is owed the canonization of two women such as Margaret Mary Alacoque and Joan of Arc.
He died suddenly on Jan. 22, 1922. A monument dedicated to him in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), Turkey, states that he was a common father «without distinction of nationality or religion, benefactor of peoples.»
He took his name from the patron of Europe, Benedict of Nursia (480-547), author of the monastic Rule and founding father of the Benedictines.
