Pope Pius IX was head of the Catholic Church from 1846 to 1878. His reign of 32 years, is the longest of any Pope in history. He was notable for convoking the First Vatican Council in 1868 and for permanently losing control of the Papal States in 1870 to the Kingdom of Italy. Thereafter, he refused to leave Vatican City, declaring himself a "prisoner in the Vatican".
Pope Gregory XVI was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 2 February 1831 to his death in June 1846. He had adopted the name Mauro upon entering the religious order of the Camaldolese.
Papabile is an unofficial Italian term first coined by Vaticanologists and now used internationally in many languages to describe a Catholic man, in practice always a cardinal, who is thought a likely or possible candidate to be elected pope.
The Secretary of State of His Holiness, known as the Cardinal Secretary of State, presides over the Holy See's Secretariat of State, which is the oldest and most important dicastery of the Roman Curia. The Secretariat of State performs all the political and diplomatic functions of the Holy See and the Vatican City State. The secretary of state is sometimes described as the prime minister of the Holy See, even though the nominal head of government of Vatican City is the President of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State.
Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro was an Italian Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, and the last man to have his candidacy for papal election vetoed through jus exclusivae by a Catholic monarch.
The papal conclave held from 31 July to 4 August 1903 saw the election of Cardinal Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto to become pope in succession to Leo XIII, who had died on 20 July after a 25-year-long pontificate. Some 62 cardinals participated in the balloting. Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria asserted the right claimed by certain Catholic rulers to veto a candidate for the papacy, blocking the election of the leading candidate, Cardinal Secretary of State Mariano Rampolla. Sarto was elected on the seventh ballot and took the name Pius X.
A papal conclave was held from 31 August to 3 September 1914 which elected Giacomo della Chiesa to succeed Pius X, who died on August 20, as pope. Della Chiesa, hitherto the archbishop of Bologna, took the name Benedict XV.
The papal conclave held from 2 to 6 February 1922 saw Cardinal Achille Ratti elected to succeed Benedict XV, who had died on 22 January 1922. It took fourteen ballots for the 53 of the 60 cardinals assembled in the Sistine Chapel to elect a new pope. Ratti took the name Pius XI and immediately revived the traditional public blessing from the balcony, Urbi et Orbi, which his predecessors had eschewed since the loss of Rome to the Italian state in 1870.
The papal conclave held from 18 to 20 February 1878 saw the election of Vincenzo Pecci, who took the name Leo XIII as pope. Held after the death of Pius IX, who had had the longest pontificate since Saint Peter, it was the first election of a pope who would not rule the Papal States. It was the first to meet in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican because the venue used earlier in the 19th century, the Quirinal Palace, was now the palace of the king of Italy, Umberto I.
The papal conclave that followed the death of Pius VI on 29 August 1799 lasted from 30 November 1799 to 14 March 1800 and led to the selection of Cardinal Barnaba Chiaramonti, who took the name Pius VII. This conclave was held in Venice and was the last to take place outside Rome. This period was marked by uncertainty for the papacy and the Roman Catholic Church following the invasion of the Papal States and abduction of Pius VI under the French Directory.
The papal conclave lasting from 14 December 1830 to 2 February 1831 resulted in the election of Cardinal Bartolomeo Cappellari, who took the name Gregory XVI, to succeed Pius VIII as pope.
Jus exclusivae was the right claimed by several Catholic monarchs of Europe to veto a candidate for the papacy. Although never formally recognized by the Catholic Church, the monarchs of France, Spain and Austria claimed this right at various times, making known to a papal conclave, through a crown-cardinal, that the monarch deemed a particular candidate for the papacy objectionable.
Friedrich Prince zu Schwarzenberg, or in Czech Bedřich prince ze Schwarzenberg was a Catholic Cardinal of the nineteenth century in Austria and the Kingdom of Bohemia and a member of the House of Schwarzenberg.
Tommaso Riario Sforza was the Neapolitan Cardinal who, as protodeacon, announced at the end of the 1846 conclave the election of Cardinal Giovanni Mastai-Ferretti as Pope Pius IX.
Lodovico Altieri was an Italian Roman Catholic cardinal. He served in various capacities under various popes and belonged to a noble Roman house making him a descendant of Pope Clement X.
Karl Kajetan von Gaisruck was an Austrian Cardinal and the archbishop of Milan from 1816 to 1846. He also held the title of Graf or Count.
Sisto Riario Sforza was an Italian Roman Catholic cardinal who served as the Archbishop of Naples from 1845 until his death. Sforza's rapid rise through the Church ranks began with various appointments before he served as the Bishop of Aversa for seven months. He was promoted to the Naples archdiocese and cardinalate. After two months, Sisto became a close supporter of Pope Pius IX and a vocal participant in the First Vatican Council.
Tommaso Pasquale Gizzi (1787–1849) was an Italian prelate who rose to the highest ranks of the Catholic Church during the first half of the 19th century.
Luigi Lambruschini was an Italian cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church in the mid nineteenth century. He was a member of the Clerics Regular of St. Paul and served in the diplomatic corps of the Holy See.
Tommaso Bernetti was an Italian Roman Catholic prelate and cardinal who served in the Secretariat of State and the Roman Curia during his time in the cardinalate. He came from Fermo and was named a cardinal in 1826 before beginning his work in the Curia. He had worked prior to his time in the cardinalate as a papal legate and governor with a dispensation for not having been a priest at that point.
