New Pope's Name Could Signal Direction of Papacy

ROME, April 18, 2005 — -- The name the next pope chooses could provide the first clue about what his papacy will become.

For roughly 1,000 years, it has been traditional for a new pope to take a new name. And often, though not always, new popes have picked their names to honor a previous pope or to signal what kind of pope they want to be.

For example, Pope Julius II "chose his name not for a saint, not for a previous pope, but for Julius Caesar," said James Keating, a theologian at Providence University. "By that, he was signaling his attempt to be a military pope."

If the next pope chooses to name himself John Paul III, it would signal a continuation of John Paul II's ideals, Vatican watchers say.

A different name may indicate a new direction.

"If the pope chooses Leo, he can say that he is going to emphasize the social mission of the church," Keating said, "because the last Pope Leo, Leo XIII, was a great critic of capitalism."

Other recent popes' legacies might attach meanings to their names -- with John perhaps suggesting a reformer and Pius suggesting a traditionalist.

Sometimes, as with Pius, a pope's name also can reflect a desired virtue. There have been 13 Innocents and 12 Piuses.

Other common pope names have been John, Gregory, Benedict, Clement and Leo. All have been used at least a dozen times.

Occasionally, popes have named themselves after relatives or mentors who were not popes.

The tradition of popes adopting new names dates back to 533 A.D., when a humble priest named Mercury became pope.

"He thought, 'Well, I can't be Mercury I — that is a name of a pagan god — and so he changed his name to John II,' " said Gerald O'Collins of the Pontifical Gregorian University. "So he started it. It hadn't happened before."

There were popes after John II who kept their own names, but around 1000 A.D., it became typical for popes to pick a new one.

Ever since, popes' real names have been largely forgotten. How many average Catholics remember the name Eugenio Pacelli, who became Pius XII in 1939, or Angelo Roncalli, who became John XXIII in 1958?