![[Pope Gregory XVI]](pope0254.jpg)
![[photo of Pope Gregory's papal tiara]](pope0254a.jpg "19kb jpg photograph of Pope Gregory's papal tiara, date unknown, photographer unknown; swiped off an anti-Catholic web site; please do not write to ask about the image")
Privately, and as pope, he was pious, kind, loyal, and a fierce conservative, both in politics and theology, and he devoted his papacy to supporting legitimate governments and the repression of rebellion.
The day after his election, a revolt broke out in the Papal States, and Gregory was forced to call on Austria for help; the revolt was crushed was crushed within a month.
European powers, alarmed at the uprising, called for extensive reform of the clerical government, and more responsibility for the laity.
To appease the French, Gregory granted a general armistice to the rebels.
The Austrians withdrew, the revolutionaries took to the streets the Austrians returned, and the French occupied Ancona.
The problem of the Papal States attracted the concern of all European governments, and liberals everywhere saw the pope as the chief obstacle to political progress.
Movements formed to politically unify Italy; Rome was to be capital, and the pope's temporal power abolished; moderate reformers proposed that the pope retain his sovereignty in Rome, and become the president of a constitutional state. Gregory would have none of this. He declared his total opposition to liberalism, his determination to preserve the traditional form of the temporal sovereignty, and his support of the legitimist monarchies, Catholic or non-Catholic, clerical or anticlerical. His encyclical Mirari vos in August 1832 condemned all that the liberal Catholics stood for. He even opposed the revolt of Polish Catholics against the persecuting Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, and in June 1832 he ordered them to submit and obey their sovereign.
Though his politics had made him a target for scorn by historians, his interest in art, learning, and evangelism allowed him to make some advances in his 15 years on the throne. He founded the Etruscan and Egyptian museums at the Vatican, and the Christian museum at the Lateran. He encouraged and supported, morally and financially, artists, writers, archeologists, and the restoration of ancient church structures. He funded the tunnelling of Monte Catillo to prevent the flooding of Tivoli by the river Anio, established steamboat transport at Ostia, instituted decimal coinage in the Roman States, founded a bureau of statistics at Rome, and reduced various taxes. He founded public baths, hospitals, and orphanages, and sent missionaries to Abyssinia, India, China, Polynesia, and North America. He doubled the number of Vicars-Apostolic in England, and increased the number of bishops in the United States. Five saints were canonized, 33 Beati declared, new orders were founded or supported, and devotion to Mary increased.