The Reluctant Pope

The Reluctant Pope

Not many believe they have heard the voice of God.

IN 1292 Pope Nicholas IV died. For almost two and a half years the papal throne remained vacant while the cardinals bickered among themselves trying to elect the next pope. They were divided along family lines: the cardinals of the Colonna family against the cardinals of the Orsini family. Finally, one of the cardinals who himself wanted to be pope, Benedict Gaetani, reported that he had received a letter from a monk well known for his holiness who prophesied divine retribution on the cardinals if they did not soon choose a pope. When questioned, Gaetani identified the monk as the renowned hermit Peter of Morone. In a surprise compromise move, the cardinals decided to select the hermit monk, Peter of Morone, as the next pope.

In the stifling summer heat of 1294, the delegates sent by the cardinals made a 150-mile journey and a thousand-foot ascent up a mountain to inform the dumbstruck hermit that he had been elected pope. Scraggy and unwashed, eighty-five-year-old Peter of Morone declined at first but was finally persuaded to accept and took the name Celestine V.

With the new pope came quite a few changes. Celestine, who was a relatively uneducated man, could not understand Latin, so Italian became the language of official communication. Disapproving of the licentiousness of Rome, he made Naples the seat of the church. To make himself comfortable in the five-story castle that was to be his home, Celestine had a wooden cell constructed in one of the rooms. He avoided ceremonial banquets, preferring to live instead on bread and water in his cell. He commenced a program of giving away the church’s money to the poor. The cardinals soon realized that they had made a terrible mistake in their selection of Celestine and were afraid that he would bankrupt the church.

In December 1294 Gaetani decided to take things into his own hands. He pierced a hole in the wall of Celestine’s cell and put a small tube in it. In the middle of the night, Gaetani hissed into Celestine’s cell: “Celestine, Celestine, lay down your office. It is too great a burden for you to bear.” The cardinal continued this for many nights until Celestine, believing he had heard the voice of God himself, decided that he had better obey and resign from his papal office.

A mere fifteen weeks after he was brought down from his mountain sanctuary to celebrate his coronation, Pope Celestine V called his cardinals together to announce his plan to resign. While he had them assembled, he also took the opportunity to exhort them to send their mistresses to nunneries and to live in poverty as Jesus had lived. On December 13, 1294, after reading the formula of abdication written for him by Cardinal Gaetani, Pope Celestine V officially became Peter of Morone once again.

After Celestine’s resignation, the cardinals quickly elected Cardinal Benedict Gaetani as his replacement. Gaetani took the name of Pope Boniface VIII. Peter of Morone wanted to return to his mountaintop in Morone, but Boniface, fearing that Peter might return one day to expose the new pope’s foul play, had him imprisoned in the Castle of Fumone. Peter died two years later, still a captive.

Reflection

The story of the rise and fall of Pope Celestine V sounds very bizarre to us today. What do you believe God’s purposes were in allowing this to happen? What lessons are to be learned from these events?

God let them go ahead and do whatever shameful things their hearts desired.

Romans 1:24