St. Pius IX?

One major purpose of the Roman Catholic Church's forthcoming Ecumenical Council is to complete the work of internal reform planned by the bishops at the First Vatican Council of 1869-1870. Last week Pope John XXIII announced that he hopes, during the course of the Council, to proclaim the beatification of the Pope who presided over that last council: Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti. who as Pius IX ruled longer (1846-1878) than any Pope in history. If he is later canonized, a process that might take decades, he will be called St. Pius IX.

"Pio Nono" was a strong-willed prelate whom many will have difficulty visualizing as a saint on the same ecclesiastical calendar with Francis of Assisi or Paul of Tarsus. Elected to the chair of St. Peter in 1846. Pius IX started out as one of the most liberal-minded Popes in centuries. He granted amnesty to political prisoners jailed during the reign of his predecessor, tried to clean up the corrupt, sluggish government of the Papal States. To the surprise of Europe's statesmen, he even seemed sympathetic to the ideals of Italian nationalism, and for a while worked actively to unite Italy's assortment of kingdoms and principalities into a federation.

Doctrine & Syllabus. Pio Nona's liberalism did not last long. In 1848, Roman civic leaders, furious that he would not consider war with Austria, assassinated his Prime Minister and set up a "people's republic." Pius fled to exile in Gaeta, near Naples. There he denned, on his own authority, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. When French troops restored him to his dominions in 1850, Pius IX was a cautious political conservative. Much of his suspicion of modern ideas is summed up in the notorious Syllabus of Errors of 1864--a belligerent denunciation of such philosophies as rationalism and liberalism that anti-Catholics still find useful as a weapon against the church.

Five years later, Pius convened the first Vatican Council. Although a preparatory commission drew up a long list of topics, only two major decisions were reached: a definition of the fundamentals of faith and the dogma that the Pope, speaking for the church on faith and morals, is infallible. On October 20, 1870, the Council adjourned. King Victor Emmanuel's troops invaded Rome and forcibly incorporated the 1,116-year-old papal dominions into the new Kingdom of Italy.

Prisoner of the Vatican. Pius refused the pension offered him by the Italian government, and settled down to live in St. Peter's as the "Prisoner of the Vatican." He died, embittered by his political failures, in 1878. When his coffin was carried to a final resting place at San Lorenzo fuori le Mura three years later, anticlerical Romans tossed mud at the mourners, unsuccessfully tried to seize the remains and dump them in the Tiber.

Because he so strongly resisted the ideas and political trends of the 19th century, Pio Nono has seemed to many historians to be a relic of medieval times. Yet many Catholic scholars defend his courage, if not his wisdom, and regard him as the founder of the modern papacy. Pope John XXIII regards Pius IX as "an admirable shepherd," whose beatification will be an appropriate symbol of the aims of the Council.

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