Pope Benedict XV - Personality

Personality

In physical appearance, Benedict XV was a slight man (the smallest of the three cassocks which had been prepared for whoever the new Pope might be in 1914 was still a good deal too big for him). As a result, he became known as "Il Piccolito" or "The Little Man." He was renowned for his generosity, answering all pleas for help from poor Roman families with large cash gifts from his private revenues. When he was short on money, those who would be admitted to an audience would often be instructed by prelates not to mention their financial woes, as Benedict would inevitably feel bad that he could not help the needy. He also depleted the Vatican's official revenues with large-scale charitable expenditure during World War I. On his death, the Vatican Treasury had been depleted to the equivalent in lire of U.S. $19,000.

Benedict XV was a careful innovator by Vatican standards. He was known to carefully consider all novelties before he ordered their implementation, but then insisting on them to the fullest. He rejected clinging to the past for the past’s sake with the words, let us live in the present and not in history. His relation to secular Italian powers was reserved but positive, avoiding conflict and tacitly supporting the Royal Family of Italy. Yet, like Pius IX and Leo XIII, he also protested against interventions of State authorities in internal Church affairs. Della Chiesa and later Pope Benedict was not a man of letters. He did not publish educational or devotional books. His encyclicals are pragmatic and down-to-earth but intelligent and at times far-sighted. He remained neutral during the battles of the Great War, when almost everybody else was taking sides. Not unlike Pius XII during World War Two, his neutrality was doubted by all sides then and even now.

Benedict XV personally had a strong devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. He added the title 'Queen of Peace' to her Litany, and gave his support to an understanding of Mary as Mediatrix of All Graces (by approving a Mass and office under this title for the dioceses of Belgium) and affirmed that "together with Christ she redeemed the human race" by her immolation of Christ as his sorrowful mother (in his apostolic letter Inter sodalicia).