As a child, Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti suffered from epilepsy, but was able to overcome it and enter into theological studies at the Roman Seminary from 1814-1818. Pope Pius VII put Giovanni in charge of an orphanage after his 1819 ordination, then sent the young priest to Chile as part of a papal delegation. He was made Archbishop of Spoleto in 1827, then elevated to the cardinalate by Gregory XVI in 1840.

The longest papacy in the history of the Church (not counting St. Peter) began on June 16, 1846, just two weeks following the death of Gregory XVI. Being just 54 years old at his election, Pius IX was hardly lacking in energy and zeal. Over the course of his three decades in office, Pius penned 38 encyclicals -- see the list here -- and built up the Church abroad like nobody’s business. Among his many strong appointments was the first American cardinal, Archbishop McCloskey of New York. Pius was the last pope to have also been a temporal ruler -- the Papal States were officially taken over and absorbed into Italy in 1870. Under Pius, religious life and the unification of the Church flourished, despite the loss of its political prestige.

Pope Pius IX died in 1878, but his cause for sainthood wasn’t opened until 1907. Pope St. John Paul II declared Pius “venerable” in 1985, and beatified him alongside St. John XXIII in 2000.

Blessed Pope Pius IX is best known for his role in defining two key dogmas of the faith while pope. The first was the Immaculate Conception, that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived without the stain of original sin through a singular grace from God by the still-to-come merits of Jesus Christ (God’s outside of time and space, so He can totally do that). Though the Feast of the Immaculate Conception had been celebrated as early as the 5th Century, Pius formally defined it with the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus on December 8, 1854. It was just four years later that Mary appeared in Lourdes, France to a young French girl named Bernadette, confirming that very teaching.

The second, papal infallibility, came by way of the First Vatican Council, which Pius had convened in 1869. It was, like the Immaculate Conception, an implicit belief present in the Church’s earliest days, but by that time required a dogmatic decree. The dogma states that the pope, by virtue of his own office and without the consent of a general council, is prevented from teaching error when definitively proclaiming a teaching on faith or morals ex cathedra (“from the chair”). For a more extensive explanation, click here. 

Fun Fact: Believe it or not, Pius IX was the first Roman pontiff to ever set foot on American territory. However, Pius never physically traveled to the North American continent as pope. Instead, when the USS Constitution, or “Old Ironsides,” was in the Mediterranean in 1849, the captain of the ship (a Catholic) welcomed King Ferdinand II and Pope Pius IX onboard. Read the full story here.