Gregory XVI

(1765–1846)

   Pope.

   Gregory was born Bartolomeo Cappellari and he joined the Camaldolese Order at the age of eighteen. He was appointed a Cardinal in 1814; he became Prefect of Propaganda in 1826 and he was elected Pope in 1831. Almost immediately he faced revolution in the Papal States but, with the aid of Austrian troops, he managed to keep his hold on temporal power. In 1799 he had published Il Trionfo della Santa Sede e della Chiesa, in which he had argued for the infallibility of the Pope and for the Papal States being a bulwark against foreign and secular intervention. When Pope, he condemned the writings of lamennais for their liberalism and he is remembered as the last Pope who was also a secular prince. His successor, Pope Pius ix, was to preside over the end of papal temporal power and to follow Gregory’s lead in promulgating the doctrine of papal infallibility. Gregory also encouraged world-wide missionary activity; he appointed nearly two hundred missionary Bishops and he succeeded in centralising control of Catholic missions in the Vatican.

   E.E.Y. Hales, Revolution and Papacy 1769–1846 (1966);

   J.N.D. Kelly (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of Popes (1986).