this day in popes

As we all know, I just love popes. In fact, if it seems like I haven’t been blogging too much lately, it’s because I’ve been spending a fair amount of spare time cross-stitching the likeness of Pope John Paul II. If you have never cross-stitched before, I can tell you that it takes hours and hours for it to look like you’ve done anything at all, but it is a good activity to do while you watch junky summer television.

Anyhoo, one of the reasons I’m big on popes is the concept of infallibility, which as super powers go, is a pretty good one. However, papal infallibility is a relatively new concept, brought about by Pope Pius IX. And today we shall discuss good ol’ Pius IX, because it was on this day in history in 1846 that he was elected pope.

Things started getting exciting as soon as Pius IX was elected pope, and I mean that literally, because Pius’s election was confirmed at nighttime, so there was no chance to spread the word about what had actually happened during the conclave. People assumed that this other guy had been elected pope, and as per tradition, the other guy’s pals went to his home and burned all his vestments because he would get new papal ones. Then, the next day, they find out that actually, that other guy wasn’t elected pope. AWKWARD.

Pius IX came into office at a tricky time during Italy’s history – the Risorgimento, or unification of Italy. At first, it looked like Pius IX was a liberal pope in favor of unification, because he did things like install streetlights and railroads, which his predecessor wouldn’t do because he claimed that the world should remain exactly as God made it. Pius also granted asylum to political prisoners and got the Austrians out of Italy. Though he was super popular, Pius IX didn’t want to be some sort of symbol for unification. By 1848, he had given a speech that writer Eamon Duffy, in his book “Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes,” called “a douche of icy water on the overheated enthusiasm which had surrounded his first two years as pope.” What an awesome sentence.

Anyways, people didn’t like the papal states holding up the unification process, so Pius IX went from super popular to super unpopular. Then Pius IX’s papal minster was assassinated. So Pius IX disguised himself as a priest, which I guess was not really that much of a disguise at all, and fled to Naples. By this point, Pius IX saw people working for unification as working for the devil, while he of course, worked for the Lord. Eventually Pius IX returned to Rome and the papal states fell. This is part of why papal infallibility came about. Because the pope lost so much political power in the transition, many people wanted to grant him increased spiritual power.

But before Pius IX pushed through infallibility for himself, he had some other things to attend to. One of his biggest accomplishments was the dogma of immaculate conception, as well as a publication entitled the “Syllabus of Errors,” which I think we must all agree is one of the most wonderful titles of anything in the history of the world. He was involved in this bizarre situation whereby a Jewish boy was taken from his parents, baptized as a Christian, and then kept away from his parents based on some rule that Christians couldn’t be raised by Jews; one of my pope books includes an anecdote of the pope playing hide-and-seek with the boy under his papal robe, a regrettable description in the light of recent sexual abuse in the church. Pius IX also called Vatican I, arguably in the top two as far as Vatican councils go. Pius IX was the first pope to be photographed, and he also got all this work done while suffering from epilepsy.

However, by the time he died, Pius IX was not liked that much. He spent his last years as the “prisoner of the Vatican,” which is not too bad a gig, and Pius actually did quite a bit in terms of sprucing up St. Peter’s and the Vatican. Still, he considered himself a prisoner because he didn’t like the financial arrangements or power structures that were offered to him after the Risorgimento. When his dead body was being moved to its burial place, people threw rocks at the procession and tried to throw his body into the Tiber River.

Despite all the controversy, though, John Paul II beatified him in 2000; one has to wonder if John Paul II thought that he would break Piux IX’s record as longest-serving pope (after Saint Peter). However, John Paul II only served as pope for almost 27 years, meaning that Pius IX is still the longest-serving pope, at a whopping 31 years and 7 months. The fun facts just don’t stop with Pius IX. Actually, they do. Longest-serving pope was the last fun fact I had at my disposal.