Gregory XVI

Gregory XVI (born Sept. 18, 1765, Belluno, Venetia, Austrian Empire [now in Italy]—died June 1, 1846, Rome, Papal States) was the pope from 1831 to 1846. His efforts to consolidate papal authority within the church were matched by his support of traditional monarchies throughout Europe.

Of noble birth, he joined the Camaldolese order and entered the Monastery of San Michele di Murano, near Venice. Ordained priest in 1787, he published Il trionfo della Santa Sede contro gli assalti dei novatori (1799; “The Triumph of the Holy See Against the Assaults of the Innovators”), advocating absolute papal Ultramontanism. In 1814 he became vicar general of the Camaldolese, and in 1825 he was made cardinal by Pope Leo XII. He was elected pope on Feb. 2, 1831, and was almost immediately confronted by a popular revolt in the Papal States, which he suppressed with the aid of the Austrians. Gregory was a conservative who banned railways in his state and firmly aligned the papacy with the conservative European monarchies led by Prince Metternich of Austria. He was an inveterate opponent of democracy, liberalism, republicanism, and the separation of church and state and even opposed the rebellion of Roman Catholic Poles against the Russian tsar in 1830. Nor did he favour the cause of Italian nationalism. He responded grudgingly to the advice of France and other European powers that he introduce reforms into the administration of the Papal States, and with the help of two successive secretaries of state, Cardinals Tommaso Bernetti and Luigi Lambruschini, he managed to stave off the forces of revolution in his own dominions during his reign.

Gregory upheld the unchanging constitution of the Roman Catholic church and the infallible authority of the papacy. He refused to support the liberal Catholic movement in France epitomized by the priest Félicité Lamennais, against whose ideas on the freedom of conscience and on the separation of church and state Gregory wrote two encyclicals, Mirari vos (1832) and Singulari nos (1834). He denounced slavery and the slave trade, however, and encouraged the development of an indigenous clergy in missionary lands. An ascetic by temperament, he concerned himself largely with the reform of the religious orders and the priesthood and with greatly expanding Roman Catholic missionary activities in the newly independent countries of Latin America as well as in East Asia, India, and North Africa. He placed these new missionary activities directly under the control of the papacy.

Britannica Quiz

Pop Quiz: 19 Things to Know About Christianity