Pope Benedict XIV

Pope Benedict XIV was born Prospero Lambertini on 31 March 1675 at Bologna in Italy. One of the most learned men ever to sit on the papal throne, he was a master of canon law and theology who served long as a curial official and as Archbishop of Bologna before his election in 1740, and he brought to the papacy a rare combination of vast erudition, practical good sense, wit, and moderation.

His pontificate was esteemed even by his age's skeptics and philosophers for its reasonableness and its openness to learning. He wrote important works, notably a great treatise on the beatification and canonization of saints that still guides the Church's procedures, promoted the sciences and the arts, founded academies, and sought through patient diplomacy to ease the Church's relations with the Catholic monarchies of Europe. He also issued rulings on doctrinal and pastoral questions of lasting weight. Prudent, humane, and devout, he died in Rome on 3 May 1758, remembered as one of the great scholar-popes.