Pius IX — Part 1
16 June 1846 — 7 February 1878

It is not without significance that in the midst of that most successful council, upon the death of Pope John XXIII, Cardinal Montini chose to drop the alternative practice of the use of Pius as the Papal name and chose Paul VI. This incredible sequence commenced with successive Piuses, VI and VII and concluded also with successive Piuses, XI and XII; and scattered between these seven popes’ adoption of the name Pius were just two Leos, a Gregory and a Benedict. In the history of the Papacy there has never been such a predominant use of a single name over such a short number of pontificates.

Pius IX, the longest ruling pope in history, was fortunate to be elected. Austria intended to veto his election and Cardinal Gaysruck, doing the bidding of the emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, arrived at the conclave with his veto, a veto which almost certainly would have been decisive. But the tardy Austrian cardinal arrived after the election was completed. Presumably Gaysruck’s credibility in Milan took a nosedive.

Pius was a pope of decidedly mixed fortunes. Chosen as an amiable contrast to Gregory XVI, he developed into a stern conservative. He was aged fifty-four when elected and both age and severe political setbacks contributed to his altered personality as his pontificate progressed.

Yet this pope played a massive role in the healing of the deadly wound, despite his loss of sovereignty over the Papal States, reducing the Papacy in principle to a religious body without a political entity, not even the territory of the Vatican as a base. Even worse, his three major achievements—the proclamation of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary in 1854, his issue of The Syllabus of Errors (1864) and the convening of the First Vatican Council (1869—1870) which approved the Dogma of Papal Infallibility—naturally caused consternation amongst Protestants worldwide and especially in its future Biblically-prophesied ally, the United States. Even Roman Catholic states were appalled by the declaration of Papal Infallibility.

Further, the decisive defeat of Roman Catholic France by Lutheran Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 weakened Papal influence and denied it French military protection.

Yet it was those very weakening factors which, when viewed in the long term, were to add unwarranted strength to the Papacy as it struggled to regain its religio-political health.

Pius lost his liberal instincts very early in his reign. He, himself, had suffered ill-health as a young man, experiencing epileptic attacks. This had led him to study theology after the rejection, on health grounds, of his application to join the Pope’s Noble Guards. His epilepsy later spontaneously abated.

He commenced his pontificate an immensely popular pope as he issued an amnesty for political prisoners in the Papal States and initiated many much-needed reforms, including dismantling the Jewish Ghetto of Rome. Romans even took the horses from his carriage and pulled the vehicle themselves, while young women strewed his pathway with flowers as a token of gratitude.

But only two years into his reign all this altered. Pius was caught between unrealized expectations of him and the growing desire for a united Italy. In order for this dream to be achieved, the northern areas of Italy, ruled by the Habsburgs of Austria, had to be liberated. Many envisaged Pius as the leader of the Italians who would expel the Austrians from northern Italy and their fellow Habsburg rulers from the kingdom of Naples in the south. Pius resiled from these expected tasks. It was always difficult for a pontiff to take sides in a conflict between two Roman Catholic nations.

In consequence a republican mob attacked Rome.

That smile was soon lost forever as an enraged assassin ended his life with one lunge of the dagger into the Count’s neck.

Fearing the mob attack, Pius IX fled to Gaeta in the kingdom of Naples, disguised as a common priest. He was accompanied by a legal advisor who was Pope Pius XII’s grandfather, Marcantonio Pacelli.

His self-imposed exile was short-lived as the French army restored Papal authority in Rome and disbanded the Roman Republic which had been set up. This experience altered Pius for the remainder of his life. He became reactionary. Most of his reforms within the Papal States, including his freeing of Jews from the Roman Ghetto, were rescinded. In adopting this mode of policy he doomed the Vatican’s sovereignty over the Papal States, although France stood his friend for the next two decades, delaying the inevitable.

Even when the republican leader, Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, premier of Sardinia, successfully ousted Papal control from some portions of the Papal States, with France distracted by the Franco-Austrian War of 1859, Pius retained most of the territory under the patronage of Emperor Louis Napoleon III, until the Prussians attacked France in 1870. The removal of the French garrison left the Papacy exposed and Giuseppe Garibaldi, who had advanced the cause of a united Italy, after the death of di Cavour in 1861, seized the Papal States and placed them under the rulership of King Victor Emmanuel II, King of Sardinia and son of the Prince of Piedmont. Victor Emmanuel became the first monarch of the united nation of Italy.

The total loss of sovereignty left the pope as a resident of a "foreign" nation, Italy. He adopted a foolish mentality, declaring himself to be a prisoner of the Vatican, and remained within the 108.7 acres of what was now Italian territory. For fifty-nine years his successors pursued a similar course through three subsequent pontificates. Cut off from every temporal privilege, the Roman Catholic Church, while never conceding to the loss of its right to direct the affairs of the nations of the world, had effectively returned to its position of loss of statehood which had been imposed upon it in 1798 when the deadly wound was inflicted. It was a fearful blow to Papal dignity and prestige and had serious consequences. While the United States had severed diplomatic relations with the Vatican three years earlier for religious reasons, this severance of ties was never likely to be resumed while it was a church devoid of a state. Indeed anyone, not cognizant of Biblical prophecy, would have been out of his mind in the late nineteenth century had he predicted a close alliance in the future between the Vatican and the United States.

Yet there was one woman, incredibly an American, who, basing her conclusions entirely on the book of Revelation, did just that. To many she became a laughingstock; but she was right, as events of the twenty-first century testify. More of her statements will be examined later.

Impotent as the Papacy now appeared to be, Pius dared to force the dogma of Papal Infallibility upon the Roman Catholic Church. Such dogma must be believed and taught under pain of excommunication. "The world would know how supreme he was," wrote John Cornwall (p. 12). On July 18, 1870, the First Vatican Council voted overwhelmingly to support such a blasphemous dogma. Pius had completely ignored the words of the man to whom he claimed to be the successor, the apostle Peter. Peter, with his fellow apostle, John, had faced the fury of the Jewish Sanhedrin, which felt that it represented properly constituted church authority and therefore under pain of punishment must be obeyed. But Peter, with words that have sounded as a clarion call to Christians down through the ages, stated the divine dictum,