Pope Pius IX (13 May 1792 – 7 February 1878), born Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, was Pope from 16 June 1846 to 7 February 1878, succeeding Pope Gregory XVI and preceding Pope Leo XIII.
Biography[]
Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti was born in Senigallia, Marche, Papal States on 13 May 1792. He met Pope Pius VII in 1814, and the Pope supported his theological studies after he was thrown out of the Papal Guard for having a seizure. In 1819, he was ordained as a priest, and Pope Leo XII appointed Mastai-Ferretti as Archbishop of Spoleto in 1827. In 1831, the liberal archbishop ensured that a general pardon was granted to the revolutionaries of Spoleto, who had followed in the footsteps of Parma and Modena. In 1839, he was made a cardinal in pectore, and he was elected Pope in 1846 following the death of Pope Gregory XVI.
He took the name "Pius" in honor of his patron, and his election occurred amidst a rising tide of liberalization in Europe. His moderate sympathies were displayed in his release of several prisoners, but Italian liberals and nationalists rose up against the Papal States as the demand for a united Italy grew. In 1848, he was forced to flee Rome after his Interior Minister Pellegrino Rossi was assassinated, and he soon became skeptical of the liberal, nationalist agenda. In 1864, his Syllabus of Errors condemned liberalism, modernism, secularism, and separation of church and state, supporting state Catholicism in majority-Catholic countries. Through the 1850s and 1860s, Italian nationalists made military gains against the Papal States, culminating in the seizure of Rome in 1870 and the dissolution of the Papal States. He refused to make the Holy See dependent on Italian legislation, and he also refused to leave the Vatican, leading to him becoming the "Prisoner in the Vatican". He died in 1878 at the age of 85.