Giovanni Maria Mastai was born at Senigaglia in the Pontifical States on May 13 1792. He began his studies at the college of the Scolopians of Volterra, but had to interrupt his studies because of illness. From 1809 to 1814, he lived at loose ends at home, then went to Rome where he came into contact with apostolic men like Vincent Palloti, Gaspard Del Bufalo and the Jesuits. He decided to become a priest. While keeping himself busy running a hospice, he followed courses being given at the Roman College and was ordained to the priesthood on April 10, 1819. Having little attraction for bureaucratic life in the Curia, he turned towards an apostolate with the people at large. In 1823-1825, he accompanied pontifical delegate Muzi to Chile. Appointed bishop of Spoleto in 1827, he was transferred on December 17, 1832 to the see of Imola. Created Cardinal in 1840, he took part in the conclave which followed the death of Gregory XVI and, on June 16, 1846, he was elected Pope in the second day of the conclave.
He had the reputation of being a “liberal” and initially enjoyed an immense popularity. In 1848, in spite of his sympathies for the Italian cause, he refused to play an active role in the war of independence against Austria. Because of that and because of an ongoing economic crisis, a portion of the population turned against him. After the assassination of his Premier, Pellegrino Rossi on November 24, 1848, the Pope fled and took refuge in Gaeta in Neapolitan territory. A republic was declared in Rome. Six months later, he was reestablished on his throne thanks to the intervention of the expeditionary force of General Oudinot.
As a result, the Pope opposed Italian unification by refusing to give up the Papal States. He was conservative as well in doctrine and never ceased fighting against liberalism. He did, however, produce good results in reviving the faith. His personal contribution to missionary expansion was minimal but he favoured the renewal of religious orders and, in the course of his pontificate, a huge wave of eucharistic devotion developed, devotion to the Sacred Heart and Marian devotion with the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854. After 1866, he encouraged initiatives whose goal was to organise the faithful in defence Catholic interests.
Pius IX enjoyed the special sympathy of the Catholic world as a result of his successive calamities: his exile in Gaeta in 1848-1849 and his voluntary imprisonment in the Vatican after the occupation of Rome by the Italians in 1870. This contributed to devotion to the Pope and to the popularity of ultramontanism which ended up concentrating the direction and control of the universal Church more and more in the papacy. This movement was solemnly sanctioned in 1870 in the course of Vatican Council I by the definition of the infallibility of the Pope and the primacy of jurisdiction of the Pope.
Pius IX led a simple life and was a pious person. His constant concern was to act as a priest and pastor, as a man of the Church responsible before God to defend Christian values that were being threatened by the growth of impiety, laicism and rationalism. The cause for his canonization was launched in 1907 under Pius X and culminated in his beatification on September 3, 2000.
An ultramontain since his youth and his studies at Saint Sulpice, Bishop de Mazenod shared the Pope’s ideas and always remained in correspondence with him. It seems that he was received in audience only five times: three times in 1851 during his trip to Rome with Father Tempier for approbation of the modifications of the Rule and twice toward the end of 1854 on the occasion of the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. He mentions Pius IX in almost three hundred letters or entries in his diary. He wrote him at least fifty-six letters and received sixteen from him, the originals of which we still have. Some of these letters dealt with dispensations, favours and decorations, the sending of pastoral letters, etc. They especially treat of the election of the Pope in 1846, the jubilee and the encyclical in favour of the Irish in 1847, the flight of the Pope to Gaeta and the invitation to come to Marseilles in 1848-1849, of Peter’s Pence in 1849-1850, of the pallium in 1851 (see article Pallium ), of the newspapers that were excessively ultramontain in 1852-1853 (see articles La Correspondance de Rome and L’Univers ), the Pope’s fall in the catacombs in 1855, the introduction of the cause of Bishop Gault, bishop of Marseilles (1642-1643) and the episcopal consecration of Bishop Stephen Semeria in 1856, the occasion of Cardinal Patrizi, the papal legate, travelling through Marseilles for the baptism of the imperial prince in 1856-1857, of Bishop Grandin, appointed auxiliary of Bishop Taché at Saint Boniface in Canada in 1858, of the war of unification of Italy and of the cardinalate in 1859 and 1860 (see article: Cardinalate), of Bishop de Mazenod’s illness in 1861.
Father Henri Verkin wrote an important article on Bishop de Mazenod and Pius IX in which he developed four themes in particular: the election of Pius IX, the exile in Gaeta and the invitation to come to Marseilles, the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and the cardinalate. In the conclusion of his article, Father Verkin wrote: “We believe that there were few French bishops in the epoch we are studying who had so much direct or indirect contact with Pius IX as Bishop de Mazenod had. The fact is due, in part, to the geographic position of Marseilles, which, we have pointed out, allowed the Pope to call the fortunate Eugene “his neighbour” and sometimes enabled the Pope to use him as a go-between as happened in the case of the cardinal archbishop of Toledo in a time of persecution in Spain. But It does seem we must also attribute this to the apostolic activity of Bishop de Mazenod and his love for the Roman Church […] It was only due to political events that the elevation to the cardinalate did not take place […] the Sovereign Pontiff, in spite of contradictory fluctuations in the political realm, maintained his regard for Bishop de Mazenod. Nothing illustrates this better than what he wrote propria manu in response to the letter in which Bishop Jeancard told him of the death of the bishop of Marseilles. “We are profoundly grieved at the death of this prelate who, distinguished by his rare love for the faith, his prayer life and his priestly zeal, distinguished himself to an even higher degree by his loyalty, his devotion and his respectful obedience to us and to this Chair of Peter…”
Yvon Beaudoin, o.m.i.
