Background
Benedict XV was born Giacomo Della Chiesa on 21 November in 1854 in Pegli, a suburb of Genoa. He was of an old noble family. As a child he was of delicate health and build. His strict father permitted him to study for the priesthood only after the boy had proved his excellence in profane learning.
Education
At the age of twenty-one Della Chiesa had a doctor's degree in jurisprudence from the state university of Genoa. With his father's consent he studied in Rome and was ordained on Dec. 21, 1878. Here he also received doctorates in theology and canon law. When the Spanish influenza struck the frail Pope, it quickly carried him off.
Career
After teaching diplomatic style in the Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics, Della Chiesa accompanied Cardinal Mariano Rampolla to the apostolic nunciature in Spain, where he served as Rampolla's secretary. In 1887 when Cardinal Rampolla was recalled to the Vatican to become cardinal secretary of state, Della Chiesa also returned with him. Within a few years, Della Chiesa had risen to the rank of undersecretary.
When Pius X became pope in 1903, succeeding Leo X, he did not reappoint Rampolla secretary of state, but instead chose the young Anglo-Spaniard Rafael Merry del Val. Disparity of views on methods to quash Modernism (a movement which resulted in robbing Catholic teaching of its supernatural aspect) brought about Della Chiesa's elevation to archbishop of the socially and politically turbulent Bologna. Pius X personally consecrated him bishop on Dec. 22, 1907. Although Bologna is traditionally a cardinalitial see, Della Chiesa did not receive the red hat until May 25, 1914. After having been cardinal for a bare one hundred days, he emerged from the conclave on Sept. 3, 1914, as Pope Benedict XV. His coronation at the Vatican took place September 6.
Benedict, deeply spiritual in his private life but extremely correct in courtesy and protocol, shunned the limelight and spent incredibly long hours at his desk. He completed and published the code of canon law. During World War I his unpopularity in the press of both the Allies and the Central Powers was due to his rigorous impartiality. He inaugurated services of charity to prisoners of war, their families, and civilian victims, undertakings which since have come to be regarded as normal. He offered a seven-point peace plan to the warring nations, which President Woodrow Wilson ultimately incorporated in his famous "Fourteen Points." After World War I, he greatly increased diplomatic relations between the Holy See and civil governments, resuming those which had been broken off, such as with France. Benedict also established nunciatures and delegations in a number of additional countries, thereby increasing the Vatican's diplomatic activities.