Gregory XVI

Bartolomeo Alberto Cappellari · 1831 – 1846

Condemned the slave trade, rejected political liberalism, and fought modernization while promoting global missions.

Gregory XVI was a Camaldolese monk who became pope in 1831 and spent his sixteen-year pontificate fighting against almost every political trend of his age. He condemned the Atlantic slave trade in the 1839 bull In Supremo Apostolatus, a document often overlooked but genuinely significant. At the same time, he rejected freedom of conscience, freedom of the press, and the separation of church and state in Mirari Vos. He used Austrian troops to suppress liberal revolts in the Papal States. He refused to allow railroads in his territory, reportedly calling them "roads to hell." But he was a tireless promoter of Catholic missions, establishing dozens of new dioceses and vicariates in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. He supported indigenous clergy abroad even while running a reactionary government at home.

Against the Slave Trade

Gregory XVI's condemnation of slavery is often forgotten, partly because enforcement was weak and partly because it complicates the usual narrative of the nineteenth-century Church as purely reactionary. He condemned the buying, selling, and mistreatment of enslaved people in clear terms. Whether the document went far enough is debatable, but it was there.

The Anti-Modern Pope

Gregory XVI saw liberalism, democracy, and modernity as threats to the faith, and he said so loudly. History has not been kind to many of his political positions. But his missionary work was genuinely forward-looking, and his insistence on training local clergy in mission territories was ahead of its time.