Alphabetical list of Popes

The Popes, in chronological order

AD 1800-1900

250. Pius VII. b. Cesena as Luigi Barnaba Chiaramonte; elected 21 March 1800, d. 20 Aug, 1823, aged 80. Entering the Benedictine Order as a teenager, he was made cardinal by his papal predecessor. He was the compromise choice, after three months of argument.  The conclave, which met in Venice,  was financed by Emperor Francis II who anticipated (incorrectly, as it turned out) that the winning candidate would accept Austrian sovereignty. Pius proceeded to regain much of the papal territory by diplomacy and at one point under extreme pressure came to an accord with France, crowning Napoleon as emperor in Paris' Notre Dame cathedral. The pope's unexpected popularity with the crowds disturbed Napoleon who  was disdainful but "he needed the pope to be there." says S&S. "The papacy's authority and holiness were still hard currency in the world of power politics".  Their relationship foundered over the pope's neutrality when Napoleon blockaded England and Pius excommunicated the emperor who, in turn, invaded Rome and exiled him to Fountainebleu. Reponding to the emperor's declaration that "all my enemies must be yours", Pius wrote that such a principle "is repugnant to our divine mission which knows no enemies....your proposition tends to make the pontifical sovereignty a feudatory, a liege vassal of the French empire".
   After Napoleon's downfall, the pope's  able secretary of state Ercole Consalvi negotiated the return of most of the papal territories at the 1814 Congress of Vienna.  Under Pius VII,  diplomats from non-Catholic states were represented at the Vatican for the first time. The pope's 1822 letter to the American church hierarchy reaffirmed that no civil laws could restrict the right of bishops to appoint and remove pastors without lay interference. Such laws would mean that "the Shepherd would be made subject to the flock". ODP terms Pius, "a gentle and courageous man" who re-established the Jesuit order, patronized the arts  and devised the papal flag.
Painting by Jacques Louis David, Louvre;portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence in Windsor Castle; depicted in painting by G.B. Cecchi in Rome's Museo del Risorgimento.

251. Leo XII. b. Spoleto as Annibale Sermattei;  elected 5 Oct, 1823; d. 10. Feb. 1829, aged 68. As private secretary to Pius VI, he learned diplomacy and under his successor became vicar-general of Rome. Elected on a conservative platform, he strengthened censorship and the ban against Freemasons and placed the Caffe Greco, a popular literary hangout, out of bounds  prohibiting his subjects from entering. Jews were ghettoized and forbidden to conduct business with Christians. Leo's  encyclical Caritate Christi  issued in the jubilee year of 1825 deplored that,  "on feast days (the people) give themselves over to banquets, to drunkenness, to debauchery and all the works of the devil", that "this scandal".. (should be) replaced by a willingness to pray, to listen to the word of God". Leo "turned the papal states into a police regime (Uz) infested with spies intent on stamping out any possible flicker of revolution regardless of cost". But Leo continued the rehabilitation of the Jesuits and lifted the ban on the  works of Galileo. Though puritanical, he "shocked the cardinals", says  S&S,  "by his passion for shooting birds in the Vatican garden. ODP says "his endeavors were hampered by a narrowly clerical outlook...when he died he was profoundly unpopular".

252. Pius VIII. b. Cingoli as Francesco Saverio Castiglione;  elected 5 April 1829; d. 30 Nov. 1830, aged 69. During Napoleon's reign he had been imprisoned. like his mentor Pius VII, who unsuccessfully nominated him to be his successor. As pope, he modified many of Leo's strict policies and supported the new French king Louis-Philippe against many of the French clergy. Pius railed against the loosening of morals and the influence of the Freemasons and insisted in his bull Litteris alto   that children of mixed marriages were exposed "to the danger of being perverted" and "sin directly and grievously against the paternal and divine law" unless they were  raised as  Catholic. Pius initiated the Vatican postal service. Monument by Pietro Teneroni in St Peter's.

253. Gregory XVI. b. Belluno as Bartolomeo Alberto Cappellari; elected 6 Feb. 1831; d. 1 June 1846, aged 80. Son of an aristocratic lawyer, he became abbot of  Rome monastery, and  under Napoleon's suzerainty he had boldly reaffirmed papal infallibility. As pope he battled a rising tide of modernity and nationalism, opposing (in his encyclal Mirari vos) freedom of the press and separation of church and state. His inflexible resistance to political change led to French occupation of papal territory. The pope battled with Spain, Portugal and Switzerland all of which sought to curb clerical authority. "His reign" comments ODP, "was a continuous struggle in the service of conservative ideals". His book, Triumph of the Church Against the Assault of Innovators   offered a foretaste of the harsh repression he imposed against rebels in the papal states. Gregory  revived and strengthened the missions, appointing scores of missionary  bishops; reformed the church hierarchy; reduced the legal age from 25 to 21; and founded the Vatican's Egyptian and Etruscan museums.  He also condemned that "excercise in human trade by which Negroes.....(are) bought, sold, and sometimes doomed to the most exhausting labors", renouncing slavery in his 1839 brief In supremo   as "unworthy of Christians". Monument by Luigi Amici in St Peter's.

254 Pius IX. b. Senegalia as Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti.  elected 21 June, 1846, d. 7 Feb, 1878, aged 85.Initially considered a liberal, he devoted much of his 30-year papacy to internally strengthening ecclesiastical and spiritual authority, resisting demands for nationalism and forbidding Catholics to participate in the political life of the new "usurping" kingdom of Italy which followed the defeat of papal forces. Declining to support the expulsion of Austrian forces from Italy made him unpopular; his prime minister was murdered and the pope himself   fled in disguise to, Gaeta,. north of Naples, being eventually restored by French troops. While presiding over the papacy's loss of temporal authority, he witnessed what ODP termed "a vigorous spiritual regeneration". In 1871, after French troops had withdrawn and Italy was at last united, Pius  told the French ambassador:"All I want is a small corner of the earth where I am master".
   Ignoring the advice of his cardinals, he promoted the doctrine of papal infallibility which had previously been a vague, unwritten tradition. When it was (approved by an overwhelming 533-2 vote at the 1869 Vatican Council), he declared:"I am tradition. I am the church".  As a child he had been an epileptic and occasional relapses later in life, made him impulsive and unpredictable.  Pius proclaimed the Doctrine of Immaculate Conception which defined the Virgin Mary as free from original sin and in 1864 published  Syllabus of Errors in  which he denounced as an error the church's need to adapt to "progress, liberalism and modern civilization". Pius also reformed the criminal code, established a free press , included the Jews in papal charities and developed the railroad system in the papal states.  By the time of his death,  he had chosen all but four of the 64 cardinals qualified to elect his successor.
Pictured with Vittorio Emmanuel  II on Rome's Gabinetto delle Stampe; in S. Maria Maggiore a painting depicts him at prayer. 

255. Leo XIII. b. Carpineto as Joachim Vincenzo Pecci;  elected 3 March 1878; d. 20 July 1903, aged 92. As the first pope of the 20th century, he oversaw the papacy's attempt to come to terms with the modern age, opening the Vatican archives to scholars regardless of creed,  introducing  electricity to St Peter's and becoming the first pope to be filmed. He revived the philosophy and theology of St Thomas Aquinas. S&S credits him with restoring the papacy's international prestige "without abandoning any of its religious claims". Leo held the line on the sanctity of marriage and fiercely opposed socialism, communism and Freemasonry. In his 1886 encyclical Immortale Dei , he defined the Church as a society perfect in its nature, and "its authority the most exalted of all authority; nor can it be looked upon as inferior to the civil power or in any manner dependent on it ". Although an advocate of workers' rights and social justice, he endorsed his predecessor's ban on Catholics taking part in elections, exacerbating the conflict between church and state which came to be known as "the Roman question". He disavowed Pius IX's Syllabus  declaring it should not be "set up as a scarecrow to frighten the world".
   Leo improved Vatican relations with Russia and Belgium, succeeded in having Germany's anticlerical laws modified, and greatly expanded Catholicism in foreign lands, especially in America whose first Apostolic Delegate he appointed in 1892 and whose Paulists he denounced for their stress on action over contemplation. During his pontificate, the Vatican was frequently at odds with the Italian state. If the popes were to regain possession of their civil authority, he promised they would not fail "to enrich it with all the perfections of which it is capable". In 1884, after recovering from a collapse, he told those around him that he had seen a vision of the future and, giving no details, declared it was "horrible".