One of the most controversial, and in my mind best, Popes of the post-revolutionary world was Blessed Pius IX, who also has the distinction of being the longest reigning Pope in Church history. One thing that stands out to me about Pius IX (or Pio Nono) is that his reign shows us a Pope who was human, and capable of error, but one who had the virtuous courage to notice when he made a mistake and take actions to correct it.
Pius was born in Sinigaglia, Italy as Count Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti. He was ordained priest in 1819, created an archbishop in 1827 and made a cardinal in 1840. As Archbishop of Imola he became known as a liberal and critic of the conservative Pope Gregory XVI. Blessed Pius IX was elected Pope in 1846, and was considered to be a liberal choice. He sympathized with many of the complaints of the liberalist movement and instituted changes that others would have considered to be unthinkable. He began laying the foundation for a popular government for the Papal States, allowed laymen into their government, and released the political prisoners, granting them all a pardon. Many leftists applauded the Pope and many conservatives shook their heads in wonder.
However, in 1848, the year of European revolution, Pius IX was shown the true nature of the liberalist movement when Italian nationalist revolutionaries took control of Rome and declared it a republic. The Pope was forced to flee the Vatican for his own safety. The armies of France and Austria came to intervene and in 1850 the Pope was restored to the Holy See, however, the policies of Blessed Pius IX would be quite different from that time on, as he had seen the true nature of liberalism and was determined to stand in opposition to it on the platform of traditional Catholic values. His opposition to the Italian nationalists earned the Pope many enemies among the liberal elites, as did his sending of a Papal legate to the Confederate States government during the American Civil War, and his support of the establishment of a traditional Catholic monarchy in Mexico under Maximilian von Hapsburg.
On the spiritual front, Blessed Pope Pius IX declared as dogma the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, from the throne, using his infallible authority to define that the Blessed Virgin was free of original sin from her very conception throughout her life. In 1864 the Pope also issued the Syllabus of Errors, in which he condemned modernism and liberalism as contrary to true Catholic faith. Five years later he made history again by calling the First Vatican Council. The most famous outcome of this meeting was the clarification of Papal infallibility, making the teaching authority of the Pope, on matters of faith and morals, absolute and beyond all dispute. However, through the 1860's and 1870's the movement for Italian unification continued and the Papacy came under direct attack by the nationalist armies. The Pope assembled an international army of Catholic volunteers to defend the Papal States (including a Prince of Mexico) but ultimately all Papal territory was taken by the Italian government, Rome was occupied and the Pope went into a self-imposed exile in the Vatican, which was to last until Pope Pius XI signed the Lateran Treaty. The Pope said that to endorse the actions of the Italian nationalists would have made him nothing more than, "the Italian king's chaplain". Blessed Pope Pius IX died in 1878, after reigning for 32 years. |
