page_title: Pope Pius IX
section_title: Centralization
hierarchical_section_title: Pope Pius IX / Papacy / Governing the church / Centralization
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: ANTONELLI GIACOMO
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: The end of the Papal States in the middle of the "Italian boot" around the central area of Rome was not the only important event in the long pontificate of Pius. His leadership of the church contributed to an ever-increasing centralization and consolidation of power in Rome and the papacy. While his political views and policies were hotly debated, his personal lifestyle was above any criticism; he was considered a model of simplicity and poverty in his everyday affairs. More than his predecessors, Pius used the papal pulpit to address the bishops of the world. The First Vatican Council (1869–1870), which he convened to consolidate papal authority further, was considered a milestone not only in his pontificate but also in ecclesiastical history through its defining of the dogma of papal infallibility.
caption: Painting of Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, Pius IX's Secretary of State
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