Peniscola, “the city in the sea” is a resort  and fishing town splayed across a sandy stretch of land jutting out from Spain‘s Mediterranean coast. At the end of this peninsula the  medieval Castle  of Papa Luna overlooks beaches thronged each summer with   German, French and Spanish families enjoying the sun and the waves. 

Alice and I  had come here for a few days visiting friends. We were surprised to learn that the townspeople still viewed with affection a person who briefly resided here and after whom the castle was named.  His is the strange tale of an old man perched on the rock, proclaiming  to a anyone who would listen that he was the one, true pope.

Pedro Martínez de Luna was born in the year in 1328 of noble parentage  several hundred miles inland from Peniscola.  After priestly ordination, he taught canon law, served as a papal diplomat, and was made a cardinal in 1375. Shortly thereafter, Luna was elected to the papacy and took the name of Benedict XIII.  It was his misfortune that another cardinal, to be known as Pope Boniface IX, was also chosen for the papal throne about the same time. Eventually it was judged that Papa Luna had the weaker claim. His supporters left him, and he took refuge in the isolated castle at Peniscola. At his death five years later, he was attended by by a few faithful cardinals, and still protested that the papacy was his. 

Till the end, he had performed his papal duties as he understood them,  receiving  delegations, dispensing favors, and arbitrating differences. From his viewpoint, the papacy was a possession to which he held legal title. As the Church’s high priest, king, and judge. he did not receive pilgrims and in general lived in a secluded world surrounded by retainers and advisers. Only on rare occasions did he appear in public, accompanied by trumpets and gloriously robed. In return, the faithful honored but but did not revere him.

This attitude of the faithful toward the supreme pontiff saw little change for centuries. Only in 1809 when Pope Pius VII was arrested and imprisoned by Napoleon Bonaparte did the Holy Father experience an outpouring of sympathy.  Within a few decades,  devotion to the Supreme Pontiff, for many, became a staple of Catholic identity. In the 1840s, a British traveler to Rome seeing the Pope at Easter Mass in St. Peter’s described 200,000 worshipers of every class and age gathered together “as the Pope stretched forth his hand to heaven, and knees were bent and the heads of all uncovered.”  This “old man,” he wrote, has an influence which no other monarch upon earth can boast.”

Despite the increased prominence of the papacy, communication with the faithful was indirect and occured in the form of letters or documents directed to bishops or government leaders. Catholics were less moved by what the pope said than by great pontifical ceremonies replete with soldiery and ranks of cardinals and  bishops.  All of these spectacular displays came to an abrupt halt in 1870  when the Kingdom of Savoy seized Rome.  For the next 69 years, popes only appeared to the public within the confines of St. Peter’s Basilica. The pope did not leave the Vatican until 1934 when Pope Pius XI traveled by automobile to the Papal summer residence outside of Rome. But the real transformation came three decades later.

The papacy, as many know it today, is very much a product of the Second Vatican Council. In 1964 the pope and bishops of the world affirmed the need for the Church to look away from itself to issues touching all people of good will.  Since Pope Paul VI’s historic visit to Israel in 1963 (the first time a pope had ever flown on an airplane), he and his successors have made 205 trips to foreign countries around the globe. 

These journeys have allowed the pope to expound the Christian message to address issues of regional importance. They have fostered dialog among the great religious cultures of the world. Insights derived from these visits have permeated recent papal encyclicals and addresses. 

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I have often thought of returning to Peniscola,  but in my mind  there is a sadness to the place, a pervasive remembrance of a dedicated son of the church, whose attachment to his rights utterly lacked the evangelistic fervor of  the martyred first bishop of Rome, whose patrimony he claimed. But  Peniscola’s sun and sea  still beckons to a place that reminds us of how far the church has come since the days of Papa Luna.