Lenten campaign 2026
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When three popes in a row recommend a book (not counting the Bible), it might be time to give it a read!
Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis, and Pope Leo have all mentioned Robert Hugh Benson’s Lord of the World, an apocalyptic novel written in 1907.
In 2015, Aleteia author Fr. C.J. McCloskey described Lord of the World like this:
Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson’s Lord of the World is a novel about the Antichrist, who will tempt Christians to apostasy before Christ’s Second Coming. It describes the final battle in the supernatural war for souls that has been fought continually both in heaven and on earth from the time of the Fall and will conclude with the general judgment; thereupon will follow the creation of a new heaven and a new earth.
A couple of years before he became pope, then Cardinal Robert Prevost agreed with this summary, stating that the book speaks "in a futuristic way about what would happen in the world if we lose faith.”
The future pope mentioned that Pope Francis liked the book, and then inadvertently used the same phrase as Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Ratzinger) in speaking about it, saying that parts of the book provide a lot of “food for thought.”
No longer "out there"
As sometimes happens with sci-fi books written years ago, some of the ideas presented in the Lord of the World seem uncomfortably close to reality, even though it was written more than 100 years ago.
While the details of the book are more extreme than many Catholics (but not all) experience, the plot doesn’t seem "out there" anymore.
Pope Francis said that in some ways, the book seems “prophetic.”
“It describes a future dominated by technology and in which everything, in the name of progress, is standardized,” he said. “Everywhere a new ‘humanism’ is preached that suppresses differences, nullifying the life of peoples and abolishing religions.”
The future Pope Leo said that, indeed, the book asks us to consider the “terms of the world we are living in and perhaps presents some challenges of how important it is to continue to live with faith, but also to continue to live with a deep appreciation of who we are as human beings -- brothers and sisters.”
In other words, Lord of the World accomplishes what many good works of fiction do: It challenges the reader to consider what is true and what it means to be human.
No spoilers here. To know the ending of the book, you’ll have to read it. But Pope Leo did weigh in, saying that by reading the book, the reader may come to a deeper understanding of the "relationship of ourselves with God -- of the love of God in our life.”
