Who, in the end, is the Lord of the world?

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Jan 29, 2026

Since the last three popes have all recommended Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson’s 1907 apocalyptic novel Lord of the World, perhaps a few words about this remarkable portrayal of the end times are in order. I first encountered it some forty to fifty years ago (at a guess), but I read it again over the past few days to refresh my memory.

As a mere technological vision of the future—surely a secondary or even tertiary point—the novel largely fails. There is nothing “Buck Rogerish” about a world in which air travel is achieved through aircraft with flapping wings (called volor). After all, the Wright brothers’ first flight was made four years before the publication of the novel.

But as a spiritual vision, the book is remarkably prescient. Benson foresees the future state of the world in which he recognized he was already living—a world focused entirely on the present material potentiality of humankind, and completely blind to spiritual reality. It is also a world in which a kind of humane gentleness (including the widespread availability of “euthanasia houses”) is maintained beneath a façade of tolerance for those still attached to the old religions, of which only Catholicism is perceived as potentially threatening.

The Church in this novel is dwindling and very weak, but she has at least cut a deal which gives the Pope complete possession of the entire city of Rome as her international headquarters. However, when Catholics in England seek to destroy “the Abbey” (a former religious house that is now the chief building for governmental affairs), the gloves come off, and a fleet of volor is sent to bomb Rome into non-existence—successfully.

Such is the context of this remarkable novel of the future. Some of these prophecies have already been fulfilled in our hearing.

The mysterious Felsenburgh and the last pope

In the early stages of the novel it is clear that a new and remarkable leader is consolidating his power over the whole earth. This man, named Julian Felsenburgh, seems to be everywhere at once, and his presence fills nearly everyone with a sense of well-being and awe. Felsenburgh makes peace among all the various remaining world factions to avoid any possibility of war, and is given office after office and honor after honor throughout the world as he consolidates his authority over all earthly affairs. This figure is rather clearly the Antichrist: He exercises a remarkable power over human perceptions, and he is all sweetness and light…until push comes to shove with the Church.

When the novel opens, the aging Angelicus is pope—the pope who took over the entirety of Rome. Somewhat oddly, he had used his power to apply the death penalty to those convicted of either apostasy or adultery, a disturbing note which seems to have little relevance to the story. But he had also put in place a network of ecclesiastical correspondents around the world who continuously report the developing local situations to Rome.

Apart from the papacy, the main focus of the novel is England, and it is from England that Fr. Percy Franklin is chosen, first, to be the Cardinal Protector of his country and, second, to work with the aging pontiff to realize Fr. Franklin’s vision of a new Catholic Order of Christ Crucified throughout the world—a religious order that will seek to salvage the situation. The Jesuits are repeatedly mentioned as part of this new effort (a point on which Msgr. Benson does not today appear to have been prescient, but could certainly be proven on target in the future) but the most highly committed among the laity are also a key part of the plan (and certainly the apostolic role of the laity has increased significantly since Vatican II). In any case, when Pope Angelicus dies, it is Percy Cardinal Franklin who is elected as the next (and final) pope, taking the name Sylvester.

Since Rome has been destroyed, Sylvester governs the Church from the Holy Land. It is he who witnesses the ever-increasing worldwide apostasy, the growing triumph of the mysterious Felsenburgh, and (in effect) the need to remain strong and faithful right up to the end of the world.

Characters and conceptions

Apart from the mysterious Felsenburgh, the character most associated with the ongoing work of secular government in England is Oliver Brand, whose mother is secretly returning to the old Faith, and whose wife Mabel is fascinated by Catholic belief, but oscillates between her attraction to Felsenburgh and her doubts about the beneficent future Felsenburgh has promised. Here we have a microcosm of the range of potential responses to the growing crisis, but with no very satisfying resolution. The mother’s return to belief is largely secret, though she does die in the Faith; but the wife’s growing disillusionment with human enlightenment (especially as violence against Catholics escalates) leads her to end her life in one of the euthanasia houses.

One of the more chilling insights in the book may be found in the growing effort of the secular power to create a program of prayer and worship, by and of humanity, with a public liturgical character. Apostate priests are called upon to lead and orchestrate this process of “divinizing” the human experience. One way or another, then, even the new Pope Sylvester can comfort his closest collaborators only with the assurance that he has seen a true vision of the end—a foretaste, presumably, of the return of Christ in glory, which blesses the final pages of the book.

When the book was first published in 1907, I presume that it made good Catholics think twice about the direction in which things were headed. When I first read it I was a professor of medieval, Renaissance and early modern history interested primarily in the process of secularization between around 1200 and 1800. The writing, after all, was already on the wall by the time of the French Revolution and its worship of the Goddess of Reason, and one secular ideology or another has been dominant in Western history ever since.

It was therefore fascinating to consider what Msgr. Benson foresaw of the patterns this wholesale secularization would take in the century he had just entered and beyond. His vision of a secularized future certainly remains compelling today, some 120 years later—when so many aspects of it have already come to dominate our lives.

Hopeless?

For Mabel Brand it had become impossible, despite her growing doubts about the secular ideal, to put her faith in Christ. She was, after all, the wife of a leading secular politician and perhaps for that very reason, as Benson put it, “a transcendent God was unthinkable”. But however accurate or inaccurate we find Lord of the World, we ourselves may still have just a little more time to see things whole.

It does not seem to be one of the possibilities given to us by God to entirely set things right. Indeed, given that every person has free will, this is likely beyond our power. Our Lord very pointedly highlighted the uncertainty of the result with some disturbing questions of his own: “And will not God vindicate his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will vindicate them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?” [Lk 18:7-8]

Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson considered this very point in Lord of the World. It is no wonder that the last three popes, in experiencing so many elements of this projected future, have urged us to read this remarkable book.