Pope Urban V

Guillaume de Grimoard (1310–1370), a Benedictine canonist from Grizac near Mende, was neither bishop nor cardinal when he was elected pope at Avignon in 1362 as Urban V. He kept the Benedictine Rule and lived simply, which set him against luxury-loving cardinals, and he pressed monastic reform and sought reunion with the Greek Church.

His 1363 crusade call led Peter I of Cyprus to seize Alexandria in 1365. That November, free companies led by Bertrand du Guesclin threatened Avignon, and he paid them a ransom to leave the Rhône valley.

In 1367 he moved the curia back to Rome, the first Avignon pope to do so, but Italian unrest drove him back to Avignon in 1370, where he died on 19 December. Beatified in 1870, he is the only beatified Avignon pope.