Pope Clement XIV

Ganganelli was born in Santarcangelo di Romagna in 1705 ==Priesthood and cardinalate==

Ganganelli was ordained around this time after he received his doctorate and he taught philosophy and theology for almost a decade in Ascoli, Bologna, and Milan. He later returned to Rome as the regent of the college that he studied at and was later elected as the Definitor General of the order in 1741. In the general chapters of his order in 1753 and 1756, he declined the generalship of his order and some rumored it was due to his desire of a higher office. Pope Clement XIII elevated Ganganelli to the cardinalate on 24 September 1759 and appointed him as the Cardinal-Priest of San Lorenzo in Panisperna. His elevation came at the insistence of Lorenzo Ricci, who was the Superior-General of the Society of Jesus. Ganganelli opted to become the Cardinal-Priest of Santi Apostoli in 1762. In 1768 he was named the "ponens" of the cause of beatification of Juan de Palafox y Mendoza. ==Election to the papacy==

Political pressures The papal conclave in 1769 was almost completely dominated by the problem of the Society of Jesus. During the previous pontificate, the Jesuits had been expelled from Portugal and from all the courts of the House of Bourbon, which included France, Spain, Naples & Sicily, and Parma. In January, 1769, these powers made a formal demand for the dissolution of the Society. Clement XIII had planned a consistory to discuss the matter, but died on 2 February, the night before it was to be held. Now the general suppression of the order was urged by the faction called the "court cardinals", who were opposed by the diminished pro-Jesuit faction, the Zelanti ("zealous"), who were generally opposed to the encroaching secularism of the Enlightenment. He took the pontifical name of "Clement XIV". Ganganelli first received episcopal consecration in the Vatican on 28 May 1769 by Cardinal Federico Marcello Lante and was crowned as pope on 4 June 1769 by the cardinal protodeacon Alessandro Albani. He was replaced as Cardinal-Priest by Buenaventura Fernández de Córdoba Spínola. He took possession of the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran on 26 November 1769. ==Pontificate==

of Clement XIV on horseback in the countryside around Castel Gandolfo, Clement XIV's policies were calculated from the outset to smooth the breaches with the Catholic crowns that had developed during the previous pontificate. The dispute between the temporal and the spiritual Catholic authorities was perceived as a threat by Church authority, and Clement XIV worked towards reconciliation with the European sovereigns. Relations with the Jews His accession was welcomed by the Jewish community who trusted that the man who, as councilor of the Holy Office, declared them, in a memorandum issued 21 March 1758, innocent of the slanderous blood accusation, would be no less just and humane toward them on the throne of Catholicism. Assigned by Pope Benedict XIV to investigate a charge against the Jews of Yanopol, Poland, Ganganelli not only refuted the claim, but showed that most of the similar claims since the thirteenth century were groundless. He deferred somewhat on the already beatified Simon of Trent, in 1475, and Andreas of Rinn, but took the length of time before their beatifications as indicative that the veracity of the accusations raised significant doubts. Suppression of the Jesuits . Franz Kollarž, The Jesuits had been expelled from Brazil (1754), Portugal (1759), France (1764), Spain and its colonies (1767), and Parma (1768). With the accession of a new pope, the Bourbon monarchs pressed for the Society's total suppression. Clement XIV tried to placate their enemies by apparent unfriendly treatment of the Jesuits: he refused to meet the superior general, Lorenzo Ricci, removed it from the administration of the Irish and Roman Colleges, and ordered them not to receive novices, etc. The pressure kept building up to the point that Catholic countries were threatening to break away from the Church. Clement XIV ultimately yielded "in the name of peace of the Church and to avoid a secession in Europe" and suppressed the Society of Jesus by the brief Dominus ac Redemptor of 21 July 1773. However, in non-Catholic nations, particularly in Prussia and Russia, where papal authority was not recognized, the order was ignored. It was a result of a series of political moves rather than a theological controversy. Mozart Pope Clement XIV and the customs of the Catholic Church in Rome are described in letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and of his father Leopold Mozart, written from Rome in April and May 1770 during their tour of Italy. Leopold found the upper clergy offensively haughty, but was received, with his son, by the pope, where Wolfgang demonstrated an amazing feat of musical memory. The papal chapel was famous for performing a Miserere mei, Deus by the 17th-century composer Gregorio Allegri, whose music was not to be copied outside of the chapel on pain of excommunication. The 14-year-old Wolfgang was able to transcribe the composition in its entirety after a single hearing. Clement made the young Mozart a knight of the Order of the Golden Spur. Similarly, in 1774 German composer, Georg Joseph Vogler was also made a Knight of the Order of the Golden Spur. Activities , one of the cardinals created by Ganganelli, would become his successor Pope Pius VI Clement XIV elevated sixteen new cardinals into the cardinalate in twelve consistories including Giovanni Angelo Braschi, who succeeded him as Pope Pius VI. The pope held no canonizations in his pontificate but he beatified a number of individuals. • 4 June 1769: Francis Caracciolo • 16 September 1769: Giuliana Puricelli from Busto Arsizio, Bernard of Baden & Catherine of Pallanza • 1771: Tommaso Bellacci • 14 December 1771: Martyrs of Otranto • 8 June 1772: Paul Burali d'Arezzo • 29 August 1772: John dal Bastone • 1773: Pope Benedict XI (formal beatification after Pope Clement XII confirmed the cultus) • 1774: Beatrix of Este the Younger ==Death and burial==

by Antonio Canova at Santi Apostoli in Rome The last months of Clement XIV's life were embittered by his failures and he seemed always to be in sorrow because of this. His work was hardly accomplished before Clement XIV, whose usual constitution was quite vigorous, fell into a languishing sickness, generally attributed to poison. No conclusive evidence of poisoning was ever produced. The claims that the Pope was poisoned were denied by those closest to him, and as The Annual Register for 1774 stated, he was over 70 and had been in ill health for some time. On 10 September 1774, he was bedridden and received Extreme Unction on 21 September 1774. It is said that St. Alphonsus Liguori assisted Clement XIV in his last hours by the gift of bilocation and was during two days in extasis in his bishopric in Arienzo. Clement XIV died on 22 September 1774, execrated by the Ultramontane party but widely mourned by his subjects for his popular administration of the Papal States. When his body was opened for the autopsy, the doctors ascribed his death to scorbutic and hemorrhoidal dispositions of long standing that were aggravated by excessive labour and the habit of provoking artificial perspiration even in the greatest heat. The Monthly Review spoke highly of Ganganelli. In a review of a "Sketch of the Life and Government of Pope Clement XIV", the 1786 English Review said it was clearly written by an ex-Jesuit and noted the malignant characterization of a man it described as "...a liberal, affable, ingenious man; …a politician enlarged in his views, and equally bold and dexterous in the means, by which he executed his designs." The 1876 Encyclopædia Britannica says that: Jacques Crétineau-Joly, however, wrote a critical history of the Pope's administration. ==See also==