page_title: Pope Pius IX
section_title: End of the Papal States
hierarchical_section_title: Pope Pius IX / Policies toward other nations / Italy / End of the Papal States
caption_attribution_description: English: Drawing of the inside of Saint Peter Basilica around 1870
context_page_description: Pius IX was head of the Catholic Church from 1846 to 1878, the longest-reigning Roman Pope. He was notable for convoking the Vatican Council in 1868 and for being pontiff when the Kingdom of Italy occupied the Estates of the Church in 1870, effectively ending the temporal power of the Holy See.
  Europe, including the Italian peninsula, was in the midst of considerable political ferment when the bishop of Imola, Giovanni Maria Cardinal Mastai Ferretti, was elected pope. He took the name Pius, after his generous patron and the long-suffering prisoner of Napoleon, Pius VII. He had been elected by the faction of cardinals sympathetic to the political liberalization coursing across Europe, and his initial governance of the Papal States gives evidence of his own moderate sympathies. He grew increasingly disillusioned with the liberal, nationalist agenda after a series of terrorist acts sponsored by Italian liberals and nationalists, which included the assassination of his Minister of the Interior, Pellegrino Rossi, and which forced Pius himself to briefly flee Rome in 1848, in parallel with revolutions throughout Europe.
context_section_description: After defeating the papal army on 18 September 1860 at the Battle of Castelfidardo, and on 30 September at Ancona, Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia took all the Papal territories except Latium with Rome and took the title King of Italy.  Rome itself was invaded on 20 September 1870 after a few-hours siege.  Italy approved the Law of Guarantees (13 May 1871) which gave the Pope the use of the Vatican but denied him sovereignty over this territory, nevertheless granting him the right to send and receive ambassadors and a budget of 3.25 million liras annually.  Pius IX officially rejected this offer (encyclical Ubi nos, 15 May 1871), since it was a unilateral decision which did not grant the papacy international recognition and could be changed at any time by the secular parliament.
  Pius IX refused to recognize the new kingdom, which he denounced as an illegitimate creation of revolution. He excommunicated the nation's leaders, including King Victor Emmanuel II, whom he denounced as "forgetful of every religious principle, despising every right, trampling upon every law." His reign over Italy was therefore "a sacrilegious usurpation."
caption: Illustration of the inside of Saint Peter's Basilica around 1870
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