Blessed Pius IX

Blessed Pius IX, Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti, was pope from 1846 to 1878. His pontificate, which lasted almost thirty-two years, is the longest in the history of the papacy. He proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary and convened the First Vatican Council, and during his reign the Papal States ceased to exist. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on February 7, the day of his death.

He was born on May 13, 1792, in Senigallia, the ninth child of Count Girolamo Mastai Ferretti and Caterina Sollazzi. He studied at the Piarist college in Volterra, but attacks of epilepsy interrupted his education. In 1815 he made a pilgrimage to Loreto; the illness subsided and he was able to prepare for the priesthood. He was ordained on April 10, 1819, and devoted the first years of his ministry to the boys of the Roman orphanage known as Tata Giovanni.

From 1823 to 1825 he accompanied a mission of the Holy See to Chile. In 1827 he became archbishop of Spoleto, in 1832 bishop of Imola, and in 1840 a cardinal. On June 16, 1846, he was elected pope and took the name Pius IX.

He began with an amnesty for political prisoners and with reforms in the Papal States. But when in 1848 he refused to go to war against Austria, enthusiasm gave way to hostility. After the murder of his minister Pellegrino Rossi, the pope took refuge in Gaeta; he returned to Rome in 1850. In 1860 the Papal States lost most of their territory, and on September 20, 1870, Italian troops occupied Rome. From then on he did not leave the Vatican.

On December 8, 1854, he proclaimed as a dogma of faith that Mary was preserved from original sin from the first moment of her conception. In 1864, in the encyclical Quanta cura and the Syllabus attached to it, he listed the views that he condemned as errors of the age. On December 8, 1869, he opened the First Vatican Council, which taught the harmony of faith and reason and declared that the pope is infallible when he solemnly, ex cathedra, defines a doctrine of faith or morals. In 1870 he proclaimed Saint Joseph patron of the universal Church.

He established more than one hundred and thirty dioceses and restored the Catholic hierarchy in England and Holland as well as the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. In 1862 he canonized Saint Paul Miki and the other martyrs of Nagasaki. John Paul II recalled that the people loved him for his fatherly kindness: he liked to preach as a simple priest and to administer the sacraments in churches and hospitals. Pius IX used to say that in human affairs we must do what is in our power and entrust the rest to Providence.

He died in Rome on February 7, 1878, and rests in the Basilica of Saint Lawrence Outside the Walls. John Paul II beatified him on September 3, 2000, together with John XXIII. He said then that Pius IX was much loved, but also hated and slandered, and that the Church, in beatifying one of her sons, does not celebrate the particular historical choices he made, but holds him up as a model because of his virtues. The assessment of his reign remains a matter of debate among historians.