Celestine’s refusal: the pope who proved the throne is optional

They went to find him in his cell. He resisted. In the end, he came down from the mountain riding a donkey, with the King of Naples, Charles II of Anjou, holding the reins. It looked like Palm Sunday. It was not.

A cell inside a palace

Celestine V — born Pietro Angelerio, a hermit monk elected pope in July 1294 after a two-year conclave deadlock — reigned for five months. They were five months of signatures wrested from him, appointments dictated by the Neapolitan court, and privileges granted to whoever arrived first to ask for them.

A man who had devoted his life to prayer did not know how a court worked, nor did he want to learn. When Advent arrived, he asked for a wooden cell to be built inside Castel Nuovo in Naples so he could withdraw and pray.

On Dec. 13, 1294, he resigned. A few days earlier, he had established that a pope could do so. In his resignation document, he gave his reasons: humility, the desire for a better life, a clear conscience, physical weakness, lack of knowledge, the malice of people, and the longing to recover the peace of his former life that the throne was taking away from him.

The pope who left and the pope who stayed

He was succeeded by Cardinal Benedetto Caetani, the same man who, according to the chronicles, had advised him on how to resign. He took the name Boniface VIII. The first thing he did was revoke almost everything his predecessor had done. The second was to go looking for him.

The old man had returned to his mountain and even tried to flee across the Adriatic. He was captured and imprisoned in Fumone Castle, where he died on May 19, 1296.

The pope who left died a prisoner of the pope who stayed.

The official reason was to prevent anyone from using him to install an antipope. That is true, but it is not the whole truth. A living pope who had chosen poverty over the throne was an unbearable mirror. As long as Celestine was breathing, everyone could look toward Fumone, then look toward Rome, and compare the two.

The forgiveness that came at no cost

Before leaving, Celestine made a gesture worth remembering. He was crowned on Aug. 29, 1294, at Santa Maria di Collemaggio in L’Aquila, and a month later he signed a papal bull: anyone who entered that basilica repentant and having confessed their sins, between Vespers on Aug. 28 and Vespers on Aug. 29, would be freed from all punishment. Without paying anything and without distinction between rich and poor.

Six years before the first Roman Jubilee, the first jubilee indulgence in history was free, given as a gift by a hermit.

Eight years later, Boniface signed Unam Sanctam, which declares that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.

The Church went from “forgiveness is for everyone and costs nothing” to “unless you submit to me, you cannot be saved.” One logic is that of the prophet: “Come, buy without money and without price” (Isaiah 55:1). The other is that of a customs checkpoint. Jesus had already said it: “Freely you have received; freely give” (Matthew 10:8).

The question

Dante placed Celestine at the entrance to hell as the man who made “the great refusal through cowardice,” a reference to a widely debated line in Canto III of the Inferno that most scholars, though not all, read as describing Celestine. Petrarch saw greatness in the same gesture, the greatness of a free spirit. From the throne, resignation looks like cowardice. From the perspective of the Gospel, it is freedom.

Here is the question almost no pope seems to ask: if the papacy can be relinquished, it is not a sacred identity but a service. And if it is a service, why does it need a palace, a flag and a throne? When they wanted to make Jesus king, “he withdrew again to the mountain by himself” (John 6:15). Celestine did the same thing 12 centuries later.

The excuses of the throne

All the excuses originate in the desert, when the devil offers Jesus the kingdoms of the world (Matthew 4:8–9). He does not propose that Jesus do evil. He proposes having power so that he can do good. Jesus says no. His heirs, far too often, have said yes.

They say power is necessary to stand up to unjust governments. History says otherwise. The last small papal kingdom was not won in a confrontation with a tyrant: it was established by an agreement with him in 1929, through the Lateran Treaty, and the other signatory was Mussolini. Then came the concordats with Hitler in 1933 and Franco in 1953.

Power does not stand up to dictators; it negotiates with them. Those who stood up to them had no territory. Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer, refused to serve Hitler even though his bishop advised him to obey, and he was beheaded in 1943. Óscar Romero had only a pulpit and his people, and he was killed at the altar in 1980.

The apostles had no borders when they said that “we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). Jesus, bound and without a soldier, told Pilate: “You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above” (John 19:11). Anyone who has a state to defend has a price.

They say that without territory, the pope would be at the mercy of governments. Between 1870 and 1929 — the period between the fall of the Papal States and the Lateran Treaty — he did not have a single square inch of land, and the world continued to send him ambassadors.

They say peace requires state diplomacy. When papal mediation has worked, it has been because of the moral authority of the mediator, not the number of acres under his control.

The war in Mozambique ended in October 1992 thanks to the Community of Sant’Egidio, a group of laypeople with no flag and no guards, who mediated 27 months of talks that produced the Rome General Peace Accords, as documented by the community itself and Vatican News. You do not need a throne to bring two enemies to the table. You need them to trust you.

They say charity needs its own finances. It is sustained by millions of anonymous people in parishes and missions around the world. Its own finances have served, above all, to fuel banking scandals and a London real estate deal that ended with Cardinal Angelo Becciu convicted of embezzlement and fraud by a Vatican tribunal in December 2023 and sentenced to five and a half years, as reported by the Associated Press and America Magazine — the first cardinal ever convicted by a Vatican court. Peter made it clear: “I have neither silver nor gold, but what I do have I give you” (Acts 3:6).

And there is one disgraceful excuse. Sovereignty also serves as a wall against victims: in October 2021, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Holy See’s state immunity barred a lawsuit brought by Belgian, French and Dutch clergy-abuse survivors, as reported by the Associated Press. When sovereignty stands between the wounded and the truth, it does not protect the freedom of the Church; it protects its image.

Then there is unity. But the unity Jesus called for is one of love, not an organizational chart (John 17:21). Concentrating all three powers in a single person is not unity: it is absolute monarchy. “But it shall not be so among you” (Mark 10:43).

Seven hundred and thirty-two years later

After roughly 10 months of renovations, the papal apartment on the third floor of the Apostolic Palace has been occupied again: Pope Leo XIV moved in on March 14, 2026, as confirmed by the Holy See Press Office and Vatican News, ending the vacancy Pope Francis left by choosing to live at the Casa Santa Marta guesthouse instead.

The galleries beside the lake, which thousands of visitors once walked through, have once again become private quarters, with security guards, a swimming pool and tennis courts.

There are official reasons: security, governance and rest. I do not judge anyone’s heart, but in Rome, gestures have always been doctrine. Celestine put a cell inside the palace. Today, the palace is once again being put inside the papacy.

The problem is not the marble. The palace is a theology: the idea that authority requires distance, that the sacred requires elevation, and that the successor of a fisherman must live like a sovereign. This is not a criticism of anyone’s faith. It is a criticism of the structure that always reclaims what a free man dared to let go.

The tomb in L’Aquila

In 2009, Benedict XVI left his pallium on Celestine’s tomb. Four years later, he resigned.

In August 2022, Francis became the first pope in 728 years to open the Holy Door of the Perdonanza Celestiniana at Santa Maria di Collemaggio, as reported by Vatican News and Catholic World Report. The popes know where that tomb is and what it says.

Jesus wrapped a towel around himself and washed his disciples’ feet (John 13:4–5). The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve (Matthew 20:28).