Pope Benedict XV

Giacomo della Chiesa was elected pope in 1914 at 59, just as Europe tore itself apart. He called the war "the suicide of civilized Europe" and tried twice to broker peace in 1916 and 1917; German Protestants dismissed any "Papal Peace" as an insult, and Clemenceau thought the effort anti-French. Benedict XV turned to humanitarian work instead - prisoner exchanges, medical evacuations, food shipments - and spent the postwar years mending ties with France and Italy, which began letting Catholic politicians back into national life. In 1917 he promulgated the new Code of Canon Law, the work he'd prepared with Eugenio Pacelli and Pietro Gasparri under his predecessor, and revitalized global missions in Maximum illud. His final months were consumed by famine and the persecution of Catholics in Soviet Russia. He died of pneumonia on 22 January 1922, seven years into the job, and was buried beneath Saint Peter's.