Pope Pius IX

Pope Pius IX (May 13, 1792-February 7, 1878) - born Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti - was the Pope and leader of the Catholic church from June 16, 1846 to February 7, 1878 the longest reign in Church history. He convened the First Vatican Council, which declared the Pope was infallible under certain conditions. He encouraged the rapid growth of religiosity among lay people, which strengthened the Church; he especially promoted devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus as symbol of love. He fought every form of modern ideas inside the Church, especially through the Syllabus of Errors of 1864. Outside the Church he fought against secularism and helped the German Catholics defeat the Kulturkampf.

Career

Scion of an aristocratic family, he studied theology in Rome and was ordained a priest in 1819.

After serving as archbishop of Spoleto (1827-32) and of Imola (1832-46). He was elected pope in 1846 by the liberal cardinals, who promoted moderate political reforms, against the conservative cardinals who who favored a continuance of absolutism in the temporal government of the Church. As Pope he not only headed the Church, but also ruled the country in central Italy known as the Papal States, with Rome its capital.

Liberal Pope

The new pope granted amnesties to political prisoners and exiles, and introduced political reforms into the Papal States, including an advisory Consulta and even a democratic constitution. Metternich, chancellor of Austria, and conservative cardinals, in particular secretary of state Cardinal Pasquale Gizzi (1787-1849), feared a popular uprising, but could not restrain the reforming pope. When the liberals asked him to send a military force to the north to fight against the Austrians who dominated northeastern Italy, Pius refused. Italian revolutionaries assassinated his premier in October 1848, and briefly held the pope himself prisoner. The French armies of Louis Napoleon Second French Republic destroyed the insurgents in 1849 and allowed the pope to return to Rome in April 1850.

Conservative

Pius now became a leader of the forces fighting liberal reform in Italy and Europe. With the collapse of the Revolution of 1848 in every major country, the conservatives were back in power and Pius agreed with them. One exception was the Kingdom of Piedmont, based in Turin, where the anticlerical liberals under Count Cavour held sway. They closed most of the monasteries in Piedmont in 1854. The pope's reaction was a sweeping denunciations of liberalism in general, culminating in his famous Syllabus of Errors in 1864.

Pius fought liberals all across Europe, and built up the Ultramontane (pro-papal) movement inside the Catholic Church. Thereby he increasingly controlled the Church and weakened the Gallican forces that wanted the Church to be subservient to a large degree to national governments. He summoned the Vatican Council to Rome in 1869-70 to examine the Church's nature, her teaching authority, and her relations with the State. It condemned pantheism, naturalism, and rationalism, and, above all defined the juridical primacy of the pope and his infallibility when pronouncing formally on matters of faith or morals.

The Piedmont's army seized Rome in 1870, making it the capital of united Italy. Pius IX refused to recognize or to have any dealings with the new kingdom. He shut himself up as "prisoner in the Vatican," and warned Italian Catholics that they should take no part in the policies of the new state.

He was proclaimed a saint during the papacy of Pope John Paul II.

Pope Pius IX

Contents

Career

Liberal Pope

Conservative

Further reading

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