Vatican City

Catholic Church Counter-revolution 1792–1878 ○ Natural causes

Pope hailed as a reformer and hope of unification who refused the war of 1848, fled to Gaeta and turned to reaction

Born into a noble family of Senigallia, he became archbishop of Spoleto and was elected pope on 16 June 1846. He amnestied political prisoners and began reforms in the Papal States, and Italian patriots hailed him as the redeemer of Italy. But in 1848 he lost his popularity by refusing war with Austria, and after his prime minister Pellegrino Rossi was assassinated he was held prisoner in his palace, fled to Gaeta and excommunicated everyone who took part in the Roman Republic. Returning to Rome in 1850 after the French had crushed it, he turned conservative. His Syllabus of Errors of 1864 condemned liberalism and secularisation, and the First Vatican Council defined papal infallibility in 1870. When the Kingdom of Italy took Rome that year he called himself a "prisoner in the Vatican". After the longest verified reign of any pope, nearly 32 years, he died in 1878.