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I wonder why our Holy Father chose the name Benedict?

I heard or read here or somewhere that St. Benedict protected the Church in a time of crisis. Don't know any more than that, except that it's the second or third most chosen papal name, next to John and Gregory.

St. Benedict of Nursia lived at the time of the fall of the Roman empire. Indeed, he was to inherit his fathers senatorial position in Rome, when he decided to give that up and become a hermit, giving his life in prayer to God. He eventually came out of his hermitage to become abbot for a community of monks who were looking for someone to head their monastery, and he became known as a strict disciplinarian. In fact, some of the miracles attributed to him were because the monks of these monasteries decided he was too rigorous in his application of rules, and tried to poison him. The cup with a snake coming out of it speaks of the miracle he performed over a poisoned cup meant to kill him off. The crow that is also associate with him is also from another time when he was given poisoned bread, and he bade the crow take it far away and out of reach so that someone finding it would not be poisoned in his stead.

He was the one that created a Rule of Life that helped establish a means for the monks to govern themselves and to be the holders of law and order in a community that had been left to its own devices when Rome fell.

Dear Aquinasfan,

Well, I read herein that St. Benedict is the patron saint of Europe. I know that part of Pope Benedict's (I like writing that!) program is to reclaim Europe for Christiantity.

I wonder, though, if he gave any thought to the last Pope Benedict, whom many considered a "moderate."

sitetest

McBrien came up with a good explanation, or a hopeful one from his side. Benedict XV tried to cool the modernist controversy and the struggle with anticlerical government and elsewhere. He was, of course, diverted from Church affairs by the Great War. He tried to intervene diplomatically,and even had the support of The Emperor Karl in 1916 in efforts to negotiate peace. But neither the Presbyterian Wilson, who had a special hatred of Austria, nor the anticlerical governments of France and Italy, nor the Germans, who despised the papacy.