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HISTORY OF THE CHURCH
from issue no. 10 - 2005

The basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in Roma

The stone with the epitaph of Benedict VII





In this sepulchre reposes the body of Pope Benedict, the seventh pontiff of that name.
He was first to push away the dirt of the haughty Francone [the anti-pope Boniface VII] who had usurped the leadership of the apostolic See and who imprisoned in the fortress [Castel Sant’Angelo] his lord Pope Benedict VI, who, set in chains in the dungeons, there died strangled. But, after having much struggled, Pope Benedict VII, by a saintly decree, drove the iniquitous invader from the apostolic See. He then subjected the plunderers of holy things with the scythe of the Church of Rome and with the sentences of the Fathers. The loving shepherd rejoices, and together all his flock.
He finally founded the monastery [of Saints Boniface and Alexius on the Aventine] and there placed the monks who sing the praises to the Lord night and day; furthermore sustained neglected widows and poor children with assiduity, as if they were his own. You, who observe the tomb, say a heartfelt: «Reign with Christ, O Lord Benedict». The day 10 of the month of July, in the ninth year of pontificate, he went to Christ, in the twelfth indiction.


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