Pope Pius IX (; born Giovanni Maria Battista Pietro Pellegrino Isidoro Mastai-Ferretti; 13 May 1792 – 7 February 1878) was head of the Catholic Church from 16 June 1846 until his death in February 1878.
His reign of nearly 32 years is the longest verified of any pope in history and second only to Saint Peter according to Catholic tradition. He was notable for convoking the First Vatican Council in 1868, which defined the dogma of papal infallibility before taking a break in the summer of 1870. The council never reconvened. At the same time, France started the Franco-Prussian War and removed the troops that protected the Papal States, which allowed the capture of Rome by the Kingdom of Italy on 20 September 1870. Thereafter, he refused to leave Vatican City, declaring himself a "prisoner in the Vatican".
At the time of his election, he was a liberal reformer, and during his early papacy, he notably eased restrictions on Jewish movement and granted an amnesty to revolutionaries, but his approach changed radically after the Revolutions of 1848. When his prime minister, Pellegrino Rossi, was assassinated and Pius himself was made prisoner in his own palace, he fled Rome and excommunicated all participants in the short-lived Roman Republic. After its suppression by the French army and his return in 1850, his policies and doctrinal pronouncements became increasingly conservative. He was behind the Mortara case, the taking of a six-year-old by force from his Jewish family who went on to become a Catholic priest in his own right and unsuccessfully attempted to convert his Jewish parents.
In his 1849 encyclical Ubi primum, he emphasized Mary's role in salvation. In 1854, he promulgated the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, articulating a long-held Catholic belief that Mary, the Mother of God, was conceived without original sin. His 1864 Syllabus of Errors was a strong condemnation of liberalism, modernism, moral relativism, secularization, separation of church and state, and other Enlightenment ideas.
His appeal for financial support revived global donations known as Peter's Pence. He strengthened the central power of the Holy See and Roman Curia over the worldwide Catholic Church, while also formalizing the pope's ultimate doctrinal authority (the dogma of papal infallibility defined in 1870). Pope John Paul II beatified him in 2000.
Early life and ministry
Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti was born on 13 May 1792 in Senigallia. He was the ninth child born into the noble family of Girolamo dei Conti Mastai-Ferretti (1750–1833), grandnephew of Pietro Girolamo Guglielmi, and wife Caterina Antonia Maddalena Solazzei di Fano (1764–1842). He was baptized on the day of his birth with the names Giovanni Maria Battista Pietro Pellegrino Isidoro. He was educated at the Piarist College in Volterra and in Rome. An unreliable account published many years later suggests that the young Count Mastai was engaged to the daughter of the Protestant Church of Ireland Bishop of Kilmore, William Foster.See the account of Edward Craven Hawtrey, recorded by Augustus Hare in The Story of My Life, Volume I (Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, 1896), pp. 593–599. If there was ever any such engagement, it did not proceed.
In 1814, as a theology student in his hometown of Senigallia, he met Pope Pius VII, who had returned from French captivity. In 1815, he entered the Papal Noble Guard but was soon dismissed after an epileptic seizure. He threw himself on the mercy of Pius VII, who elevated him and supported his continued theological studies.
Mastai-Ferretti was ordained a priest on 10 April 1819. The Pope had originally insisted that another priest should assist Mastai-Ferretti during Holy Mass, but rescinded the stipulation after the seizures became less frequent. He initially worked as the rector of the Tata Giovanni Institute in Rome.
Shortly before his death, Pius VII – following Chilean leader Bernardo O'Higgins' wish to have the Pope reorganize the Catholic Church of the new republic – named him auditor to assist the apostolic nuncio, Monsignore Giovanni Muzi, in the first mission to post-revolutionary South America. The mission had the objective to map out the role of the Catholic Church in Chile and its relationship with the state, but when it finally arrived in Santiago in March 1824, O'Higgins had been overthrown and replaced by General Ramón Freire, who was less well-disposed toward the Church and had already taken hostile measures such as the seizure of Church property. Having ended in failure, the mission returned to Europe.Yves Chiron, Pie IX. Face à la modernité, Éditions Clovis, 2016 (2nd ed.), pp. 63–71. Nevertheless, Mastai-Ferretti had been the first future pope ever to have been in the Americas. Upon his return to Rome, the successor of Pius VII, Pope Leo XII, appointed him head of the hospital of San Michele a Ripa in Rome (1825–1827) and canon of Santa Maria in Via Lata.
Leo XII appointed the 35-year-old Mastai-Ferretti Archbishop of Spoleto in 1827. In 1831, the abortive revolution that had begun in Parma and Modena spread to Spoleto; the Archbishop obtained a general pardon after it was suppressed, gaining him a reputation for being liberal. During an earthquake, he made a reputation as an efficient organizer of relief and great charity. The following year he was moved to the more prestigious Diocese of Imola, was made a cardinal in pectore in 1839, and in 1840 was publicly announced as cardinal-priest of Santi Marcellino e Pietro al Laterano. As in Spoleto, his episcopal priorities were the formation of priests through improved education and charities. He became known for visiting prisoners in jail and for programs for street children. Cardinal Mastai-Ferretti was considered a liberal during his episcopate in Spoleto and Imola because he supported administrative changes in the Papal States and sympathized with the nationalist movement in Italy.
Election
The conclave of 1846, following the death of Pope Gregory XVI (1831–1846), took place in an unsettled political climate within Italy. The conclave was steeped in a factional division between right and left. The conservatives on the right favoured the hardline stances and papal absolutism of the previous pontificate, while liberals supported moderate reforms. The conservatives supported Luigi Lambruschini, the late pope's Cardinal Secretary of State. Liberals supported two candidates: Tommaso Pasquale Gizzi and the then 54-year-old Mastai-Ferretti.
During the first ballot, Mastai-Ferretti received 15 votes, the rest going to Lambruschini and Gizzi. Lambruschini received a majority of the votes in the early ballots but failed to achieve the required two-thirds majority. Gizzi was favoured by the French government but failed to get further support from the cardinals, and the conclave ended up ultimately as a contest between Lambruschini and Mastai-Ferretti. In the meantime, Cardinal Tommaso Bernetti reportedly received information that Cardinal Karl Kajetan von Gaisruck, the Austrian Archbishop of Milan, was on his way to the conclave to veto the election of Mastai-Ferretti on behalf of the Austrian Empire and Prince Metternich. According to historian Valérie Pirie, Bernetti realized that he had only a few hours in which to stop Lambruschini's election.
Faced with a deadlock and urgently persuaded by Bernetti to reject Lambruschini, liberals and moderates decided to cast their votes for Mastai-Ferretti, in a move that contradicted the general mood throughout Europe. On the evening of the second day of the conclave, 16 June 1846, Mastai-Ferretti was elected pope. "He was a glamorous candidate, ardent, emotional with a gift for friendship and a track-record of generosity even towards anti-Clericals and Carbonari. He was a patriot, known to be critical of Gregory XVI." Because it was night, no formal announcement was given, just the signal of white smoke.
On the following morning, the Cardinal protodeacon, Tommaso Riario Sforza, announced the election of Mastai-Ferretti before a crowd of faithful Catholics. When Mastai-Ferretti appeared on the balcony, the mood became joyous. He chose the name of Pius IX in honour of Pope Pius VII, who had encouraged his vocation to the priesthood despite his childhood epilepsy. However, the new pope had little diplomatic experience and no curial experience at all. Pius IX was crowned on 21 June 1846.
The election of the liberal Pius IX created much enthusiasm in Europe and elsewhere. "For the next twenty months after the election, Pius IX was the most popular man on the Italian peninsula, where the exclamation "Long life to Pius IX!" was often heard.In den nächsten zwanzig Monaten war Pius IX. der populärste Mann der Halbinsel; des Rufes "Evviva Pio nono!" war kein Ende mehr. (Seppelt –Löffler: Papstgeschichte, München 1933, p. 408). See archive.org (download) English Protestants celebrated him as a "friend of light" and a reformer of Europe towards freedom and progress. He was elected without secular political influences and in the full vigor of life. He was pious, progressive, intellectual, decent, friendly, and open to all. While his political views and policies were hotly debated in the coming years, his personal lifestyle was above reproach, a model of simplicity and poverty in everyday affairs.
Papacy Cardinal Mastai-Ferretti entered the papacy in 1846, amidst widespread expectations that he would be a champion of reform and modernization in the Papal States, which he ruled directly, and in the entire Catholic Church. Admirers wanted him to lead the battle for Italian independence. His later turn toward profound conservatism shocked and dismayed his original supporters, while surprising and delighting the conservative old guard.David I. Kertzer, The Pope Who Would Be King: The Exile of Pius IX and the Emergence of Modern Europe (2018) p. xx.
Centralization of the church
The most notable event in Pius IX's long pontificate was the end of the Papal States, which lay in the middle of the "Italian boot" around the central area of Rome. In contrast, he led the worldwide Church toward an ever-increasing centralization and consolidation of power in Rome and the papacy. More than his predecessors, Pius used the papal pulpit to address the bishops of the world. The First Vatican Council (1869–1870), which he convened to consolidate papal authority further, was considered a milestone not only in his pontificate but also in ecclesiastical history through its defining of the dogma of papal infallibility.
Dispute with the Melkite Greek Catholic Church After the First Vatican Council concluded, an emissary of the Roman Curia was dispatched to secure the signatures of Patriarch Gregory II Youssef and the rest of the Melkite delegation who had voted non placet at the general congregation and left Rome prior to the adoption of the dogmatic constitution Pastor aeternus on papal infallibility. Gregory and the Melkite bishops ultimately subscribed to it, but added the qualifying clause used at the Council of Florence: "except the rights and privileges of Eastern patriarchs."Zoghby (1998), p. 83 This earned Gregory the enmity of Pius IX; during his next visit to the pontiff, before leaving Rome, when Gregory was kneeling, Pius placed his knee on the patriarch's shoulder, just saying to him: Testa dura! (You obstinate man!).Parry (1999), p. 313. See also the account given by Zoghby (1998), p. 83 In spite of this event, Gregory and the Melkite Greek Catholic Church remained committed to their union with the Holy See.
Ecclesiastical rights