Pius IX (reigned 1846β78) was the pope when papal infallibility was formally defined as dogma in 1870, during the First Vatican Council, which Pius convoked. The longest-reigning pontiff in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, he reigned as the papacy was under attack from Italian nationalists and amid calls for modernization in the church. From 1870 until his death eight years later, Pius was a self-imposed βprisoner of the Vatican,β refusing to acknowledge the newly unified Italian government.
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