Percy Franklin, who is elected Pope Sylvester III and who looks strikingly similar to Felsenburgh. The only ones who remain in opposition are the few members of a remnant Church, led by Fr. Any opposition to Felsenburgh and the world order that he leads melts away: nations beg Felsenburgh to be their leader, and people embrace him by mass acclamation. The story itself concerns the ascent of Antichrist to world power, primarily in the person of the enigmatic Julian Felsenburgh, a mysterious American senator who rises to worldwide prominence by negotiating a long-desired world peace.
Indeed, in the edition recently released by Ave Maria Press, the excellent introductory essays describe Robert Hugh Benson’s vision as one that inspired the genre of dystopian fiction, and they also give background on Benson’s conversion from Anglican cleric to Catholic priest. When you read Lord of the World, it’s easy to see the prophetic character of the book, to see the technological predictions that have materialized, to see even some of the political predictions come true we think of other stories such as 1984 and Brave New World. The “colonization” he refers to is a process in which economically and politically powerful cultures such as those in America and in Western Europe impose a materialistic and secular worldview on the developing world. When Pope Francis spoke of the book as showing the dangers of globalization and what he calls “ideological colonization,” he did so in the context of his visit to the Philippines. In a way, Lord of the World is more timely now than it was when Benson wrote it in the early 20th century. The world depicted by Benson is eerily similar to our own: rapid travel and communication systems, weapons of mass destruction, and a materialistic outlook that denies the supernatural and purports to elevate humanity to the highest place. Pope Francis raised eyebrows in 2013 and again in 2015 when he recommended Robert Hugh Benson’s Lord of the World to the faithful as a book that depicts a “globalization of hegemonic uniformity.” Similarly, then-Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, referred to the Universalism depicted in Lord of the World in an address he gave in Milan in 1992.
And not just the current pope, the previous one too. It’s a somewhat obscure apocalyptic novel, much overlooked since its publication in 1907, and yet it comes with a recommendation that just about any best-selling author would covet: the spiritual leader of the whole world says it’s a good read.
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