In the area of the Altar of the Confession at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, right in front of the reliquary containing the remains of Jesus' Crib, there is a great marble statue that is sharing with you that sacred space. This work of art will give you the opportunity to know more about a period that really changed of Rome. 

It is a fine marble statue by the sculptor Ignazio Jacometti which depicts the pontiff Pius IX. He was elected as pope in 1846 and he remained on the Peter's throne for more than 31 years (he died in 1878), so much so that even today his pontificate is the longest  one in the history of the christian Church after that of St. Peter, the first pope. He was an energetic and cultured man, but he mainly became a character of the italian and roman history because, during his pontificate, he always tried to get the Catholic Church out from the shoals caused by the regurgitation of republican, constitutional and liberal that shook the status quo of the european union in the course of the XIX century. At that time, in fact, following the French Revolution and of the grip that those ideals did on many, all the historical european monarchies found themselves in difficulty. In Italy, movements and associations more or less secret, as the Carbonari one, attempted to overthrow the secular temporal power and the theocracy one of the Catholic Church, considered by many to be a symbol of obscurantism and dogmatism.

When Pius IX was elected pope, however, initially had attitudes closer to these motions and the liberals, so much that he aimed to establish constitutions along the lines of the French, reversing completely the power and privileges of the individual kings, ruling families, and clergy. Often these impulses are turned into riots, and attempts at revolutionary. Pius IX granted amnesty to those who were in prison because of these riots, as it will always be Pius IX, initially, to "modernize" the State of the Church: freedom for the jews, construction of roads and railways, the freedom of the press. Thanks to him we have in Rome, for example, the railway Termini Station and that one of Porta Maggiore (the latter is today an important hub of the tram). Thanks to him we have in Rome the construction of some bridges, such as the so-called Iron Bridge, at the time considered the plus ultra of industrial architecture. For all those reasons we can understand why this pontiff, thanks to his acts and decisions, mainly for the free press, the amnesty and others, became a sort of a dream that becomes a reality. A dream that became true for those who dreamed of a new world.

A dream that broke with the revolutionary movements of 1848, which mainly saw Milan as the protagonist. The pope didn't send troops in support of the population of Milan, as others could expect. And keep in mind how Milan, in Italy, became a symbol of freedom and fight against the monarchy and tyranny, in this case the austrian one. It was the beginning of the end. The roman people, but also many of the guards skullcaps and men workers to services of the police, they did not see in a good way this radical change of attitude. You were waiting for a Pius IX at the ready with their armies, to give assistance to these men by strong spirits who, though free from the yoke of the monarchy and oppression, and were ready even to sacrifice himself. All in the name of freedom. Pius IX, however, chose precisely a policy of wait-and-see. As a result of his ambiguous behavior, people in Rome directly fought against the Pope, so much that he was forced to escape by dressing up like a simple priest, and took refuge in Gaeta, at the time within the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

Pius IX was initially locked up in her residence at the Quirinal Palace, and only the promptness of the spirit, and the lack of preparation of the men who were supposed to oversee them, led to his escape. The Pope's response, however, did not wait because, thanks to the support of the French army, returned to the city (after 17 months). And here repressed harshly as any other revolutionary act, by deleting from the history of the fledgling Roman Republic and restoring some of the practices, such as the death penalty, that they knew of the old regime. The French fought Rome against the members of this Roman Republic that, for many aspects, it was a real laboratory for social and political: inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution, in fact, the fledgling Roman Republic, and endowed Rome of a real Constitution, as it ever had been. The Romans, however, began to think very badly about Pius IX when the first French bombs destroyed some houses, destroying entire areas of Rome. The inhabitants of the town began to cry out, to feel the explosions caused by explosive devices screaming: "Here's a Pius the Ninth". In fact it seems that the Pope it seems directly ordered to France to do whatever it was possibile to recover the throne. Of course there were many difficulties encountered by Pius IX who coming back to Rome recognized again the infallibility of the Pope. The pontiff, inspired by God, was supposed to force things to act always in the right. Perhaps this statue shows us a pope that is humble and soft-spoken, with the face relaxed face to prayer and to search, perhaps, of a definitive solution to the political and social changes in the act. A double face Pope, in short, who was probably a victim of events. We can say that we know one thing: he was the last pope of the Papal State, definitively suppressed with the capture of Rome of 1870, it is the work of the new Kingdom of Italy and King Vittorio Emanuele II.