Today is the feast of St Celestine V (1296), a simple monk who experienced great tensions between the office of Pope and the call to holiness and resolved them by abdicating after 5 mos. His memory was invoked by the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI in 2013. Less remembered:
Conversation
He was arrested and imprisoned by his successor, Pope Boniface VIII, whose penchant for statecraft and intrigue was in every way a contrast with the character of the saintly Celestine. He proclaimed that the salvation of all creatures depends on subjection to the Pope.
For saddling the church with Boniface Dante placed Celestine in the vestibule of the Inferno. Italian novelist Ignacio Silone made Celestine the hero of a play in which his story dramatizes the conflict between the spirit of the gospel and the principle of power.
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