Pope Gregory XVI

Pope Gregory XVI was born Bartolomeo Alberto Cappellari on 18 September 1765 at Belluno in the Venetian territory of Italy. A Camaldolese monk of great learning and a defender of papal authority, he was elected pope in 1831, the last pope to be chosen who was not already a bishop. His pontificate unfolded amid the revolutionary and nationalist ferment that was reshaping Europe, which he viewed with deep suspicion as a threat to religion and the established order.

A firm conservative, he resisted the liberal and revolutionary movements of his day, including uprisings within the Papal States, and in his encyclical Mirari Vos he condemned currents of religious liberalism and indifferentism. Yet he was also a zealous promoter of the Catholic missions, greatly expanding the Church's missionary work in Asia, Africa, and the Americas and appointing many new bishops in mission lands, and he notably condemned the slave trade in 1839. A patron of the arts and of scholarship, he died in Rome on 1 June 1846.