Pope Adrian VI

Adriaan Florensz Boeyens was born in Utrecht on 2 March 1459, studied theology at the University of Leuven, and rose to professor and rector before becoming tutor to the future Charles V in 1507. Charles trusted him enough to make him bishop of Tortosa in 1516, then Grand Inquisitor of Aragon and Castile; Pope Leo X added a cardinal's hat in 1517. Elected pope on 9 January 1522 as a compromise candidate, Adrian inherited a crisis on all fronts: Lutheranism spreading, the Ottomans advancing, and a corrupt Roman Curia. He refused theological compromise with Luther but openly admitted the Church's own guilt at the 1522-1523 Diet of Nuremberg - a rare papal mea culpa. His reform efforts met resistance from nearly everyone around him, and he died on 14 September 1523, barely twenty months in, leaving the work undone. He kept his baptismal name, a choice only one other modern pope would make.