A wee bit of fictional biography I might flesh out more. I wanted to post what I have, at any rate. Enjoy, I hope!
ENGLAND’S POPE
1940
Interned (along with so many other British servicemen) at Chelmsford Concentration Camp, Christopher Lee, a member of the Local Defense Volunteers, was retained there until March 1941 and the signing of the Treaty of Nuremberg. During that time, he converted to the Catholic religion under the ministry of his eventual predecessor as Archbishop of Westminster (then the headmaster of a Catholic school in Nottingham).
Seminary and Ordination
A year after being released from German custody, Lee entered the Venerable English College in Rome. He was ordained by Bernard Cardinal Griffin, Archbishop of Westminster, in 1947. Depressing days as the Germans and the Army rooted out the last diehards of Section VII, the LDV and the People’s Army of Britain.
Parish Life
Assigned first to St. Victoria’s Church in Ealing, London and then SS Gregory and Augustine in Oxford. Struggling as a Catholic priest in a nation that was officially ‘down on’ Christianity in general and Catholicism (that “pseudo-Judaic canker sore” as Hitler famously described it) in particular. Hard times for Britain in general, as so much of the country’s industry was ‘refocused’ to helping the war effort in the East. In Oxford, Father Christopher established relationships with the local Jesuits and lay Catholics (such as blacklisted former Oxford don J.R.R. Tolkien) who would later play a quiet but important role in his episcopal career. In 1958, Pius XII died and was succeeded by Gregory XVII after a long, contentious conclave.
Council
Gregory XVII convened the Sixth Lateran Council (1959-1961). It dealt with issues of Church and state in the New Order, the Church in the post-colonial Third World, the Church and modern learning, etc. Undercurrent of debate on civil disobedience. What is Caesar owed? Father Christopher was sent as one of the English representatives to the first stage of the Council and recalled to England in the spring of 1960.
Bishop of Portsmouth
1961, Father Christopher, having spent four years as part of the diocesan chancery of Southwark, was appointed Bishop of Portsmouth.
The Birmingham Years
1965, made Archbishop of Birmingham. Troubles all around. Economic slump. A new post-war generation coming of age and bringing with it a new wave of popular disquiet with German domination. Attempts at a People’s Fascism (or, more daringly, No Fascism Here) met with brutal force, mass imprisonment and exile to the concentration camps in the Shetlands and Hebrides.
He’s Not the Bloody Primate of All England
1970, made Archbishop of Westminster, succeeding George Beck. Created a cardinal three years later.
Conclave and Coronation
August, 1985. Chosen on the third ballet. First non-Italian pope since the 16th century. Took the name Leo XIV.
England’s Pope
Very tense relationship between PM Tyndall and Leo XIV. “I don’t care what the Catholics do. This is the 20th century and Britain looks ahead.” The reaction in the rest of Britain was more mixed, of course.
The Church and the Reich
His famous two hour long 1985 interview with David Brinkley, the first time a Pope had ever done such a thing, covered a range of topics but focused on the role of the Church in a hostile age. “These people, these groups, who try to crush the Church. They won’t triumph. They never have, you know, in the end. Two thousand years of assaults on Christ’s Church on Earth and, well, we’re still here. That really ought to tell you something, don’t you think?” Leo’s ideas were expressed more formally and at greater length in his famous 1987 encyclical Si autem vos Christi. “There are two competing visions of humanity today. The one, rooted in Sacred Scripture, is universal. It is simply this: ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek... for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’ The other, which is popular in large parts of the world at the moment, is relentlessly singular. There is no universal brotherhood. There is only endless conflict among people of different races to prove which one is the master. There’s a great deal of disagreement on who exactly the master race is. But Christ teaches us that mastery doesn’t come from battle and domination. It’s quite the other way around. We can look at those who have tried to master Christ’s Church on Earth through battle and domination. They are the dust of Ozymandias. The Church endures, from Abraham to our own age.”
The Grand Tour
The summer of 1990 saw the Pope undertake a round the world journey. He hoped to return to Britain, but was denied permission by the Prime Minister, and instead commenced his pilgrimage in Canada. He visited Quebec City, Montreal (where he celebrated Pentecost at the cathedral), Ottawa (where he had a cordial audience with PM Peter Cushing, who became a close friend), Toronto, Buffalo, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver (he was received by Margaret, the Queen in Exile, at Hatley Castle, BC, much to the scorn of His Majesty’s Government; the response in L’Osservatore Romano was “as a sovereign head of state, the Bishop of Rome is free to call upon whomever he chooses.”), Tokyo, Nagasaki, Nanjing, Shanghai, Canton, Calcutta, Delhi, Trivandrum, Jerusalem, and, despite security concerns owing to the Upper Nile War, Alexandria and Cairo. Rebuffed by the Reich, Leo XIV celebrated mass in Bolzano, near the Italian-German border, and consecrated his pilgrimage to the Virgin Mary and St. Benedict, Patron of Europe.
“He’s got two feet in the past!”
Even as the Reich began to decay, the one man who, perhaps more than anyone, embodied resistance to it, was criticized for being out of touch, even (or especially) in his homeland. This was more than the usual Guy Fawkes bonfires and Orange Order insults, but a more widespread disdain for the traditionalist Pope and his Church.
Outliving the Reich
The last decade of Leo’s life saw him grappling with both the gradual collapse of the Reich and the new opportunities it afforded. There were long, bitter legal battles to reclaim church property appropriated for the German Faith Movement by the old government. Leo saw to it that the Church played a major role, alongside the Red Cross, in refugee relief and resettlement. Spes mea Christus, his final encyclical, was issued after the abdication of the final Führer (it was later revealed it had been written a decade and a half earlier and only lightly revised as circumstances changed).
End of an Era
After a long struggle with cancer (“this terrible, purifying torment”) Pope Leo passed on June 15, 2012, just a few weeks after his 90th birthday. Funeral attended by both Queen Mary III (grand-daughter of Edward VIII) and George Albert Edward Windsor-d’Audemer (aka “George VII”), as well as dozens of other heads of state and dignitaries both secular and ecclesiastical. In 2014, the cause for Leo XIV’s canonization was opened by his successor, Pius XIII (Cardinal Archbishop Omero Baseggio of Venice).