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The 10 popes immediately before Francis

Daily Tens #79 · Wednesday, September 30, 2026 · Ranked by reverse succession order, most recent first

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Heads up: the answers are published further down this page.

About this ranking

This papal-history puzzle starts with Francis’ immediate predecessor and works backward through ten pontificates. It is anchored to the start of Francis’ pontificate in 2013, rather than to the present officeholder. Rank one therefore means the closest predecessor in this defined historical window, not the longest reign, earliest birth or highest perceived influence.

The answers

Pontificate began (year) for the archived answer set
Rank Answer Pontificate began (year)
1 Benedict XVI 2,005
2 John Paul II 1,978
3 John Paul I 1,978
4 Paul VI 1,963
5 John XXIII 1,958
6 Pius XII 1,939
7 Pius XI 1,922
8 Benedict XV 1,914
9 Pius X 1,903
10 Leo XIII 1,878

Values follow the dated source snapshot and the original answer order. Rounding is for display only; the ranking uses the stored values.

Reverse succession rather than duration

Benedict XVI is followed on the board by John Paul II and John Paul I because the list moves backward through the succession. A short pontificate is still one entry; duration does not determine eligibility or position. The order is opposite to a forward chronological list of these same officeholders. That directional rule matters when a plausible set of ten names appears correct but has been arranged from oldest to newest rather than from Francis’ immediate predecessor backward.

Names identify the officeholders

Papal names, including their ordinal numbers, are the answer forms used here. John Paul I and John Paul II are separate people, while a secular birth name refers to the same person under a different naming convention. Omitting the ordinal can make an answer ambiguous. The same issue occurs with the Pius names that appear in the older part of the interval. A source table listing both papal and secular names helps connect identities without treating those names as extra entries.

Election, inauguration and the fixed boundary

The Holy See’s list can show dates associated with election and inauguration or coronation. Those are useful context, but this question needs the succession order rather than a calculation of elapsed reign lengths. Benedict XVI’s resignation also shows why the end of a pontificate is not always the date of death. Later papal transitions do not shift this puzzle’s boundary: it explicitly asks about the ten before Francis. To check the answer set, locate Francis in the source’s succession list, take the preceding ten pontificates and reverse their order. Do not replace that historical anchor with today’s pope or merge short pontificates out of the sequence.

Two different 1978 entries are intentional

John Paul I and John Paul II both began pontificates in 1978, but they are separate people and successive popes. In this reverse chronology, John Paul II appears before John Paul I. The year column therefore cannot determine their relative position on its own; the Vatican’s succession order does. The source sometimes gives both an election date and an inauguration or coronation date. Those dates describe different events within one pontificate and must not be counted as two separate entries.

Sources & further reading

Explanation updated . The puzzle’s original data date is listed below.

Sources & methodology

Metric
Reverse succession order, most recent first
Data through
Before Francis began his pontificate in 2013
Source
The Holy See — Pontiffs
Notes
Starts with Francis’s immediate predecessor and works backward through ten pontificates. Papal names are used, not secular birth names.

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