Pope Benedict XIV

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Benedict XIV, born Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini (Bologna, March 31, 1675 – May 3, 1758 in Rome), was Pope from 17 August 1740 to 3 May 1758.

He was born into a noble family of Bologna, which was at that time the second largest city in the Papal States. He was elected Pope in 1740. The conclave which elected him had lasted six months; he is alleged to have said to the cardinals: "If you wish to elect a saint, choose Gotti; a statesman, Aldrovandi; an honest man, elect me." His Papacy began in a time of great difficulties, chiefly caused by the disputes between Catholic nations and the Papacy about governmental demands to nominate bishops rather than leaving the appointment to the Church. He managed to overcome most of these problems — the Holy See's disputes with the Kingdom of Naples, Sardinia, Spain, Venice, and Austria were settled.

He had a very active papacy, reforming the education of priests, the calendar of feasts of the Church, and many papal institutions. Perhaps the most important act of Benedict XIV's pontificate was the promulgation of his famous laws about missions in the two bulls, Ex quo singulari and Omnium solicitudinum. In these bulls he ruled on the custom of accommodating Christian words and usages to express non-Christian ideas and practices of the native cultures, which had been extensively done by the Jesuits in their Indian and Chinese missions. An example of this is the statues of ancestors - there had long been uncertainty whether honor paid to ones ancestors was unacceptable 'ancestor worship,' or if it was something more like the Catholic veneration of the saints. This question was especially pressing in the case of an ancestor known to have not been a Christian. The choice of a Chinese translation for the name of God had also been debated since the early 1600s. Benedict XIV denounced these practices in these two bills. The consequence of this was that many of these converts left the Church.

Benedict XIV was also responsible, along with Cardinal Passionei, for beginning the catalogue of the Vatican Library and in 1757, he entrusted the relics of St. Donatus of Libya, a beheaded corpse, to the Third Order Franciscans, in the village of Vila do Conde, Portugal.

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