12. THE PAPACY AND THE GOV ERNMENT. Italy has been called upon to solve the gravest and most important problem that has agitated modern Europe — that of the abolition of the temporal power of the Pope. We cannot here dwell on the history of the rise of this power. Its raison d'itre at the present day, from the ecclesiastical point of view, is that, with the Catholic Church organized into a monarchy, with the Pope as sovereign, in Rome, the Catholic world, he would have sought to secure the independence of the Great European States, and would have acted as pacificator and umpire in settlement of their differences. Those states on their part recognizing the value of the influence of the papacy for their own pur poses, would consequently take care that this great power should not fall into bondage to any one of them, but should remain independent and autonomous.
Hence it followed that the popes sought to form a temporal power of their own, in which they should rank as independent sovereigns, and since they were unable to form one strong and powerful state, they sought to keep Italy divided up into several petty states, thus pre venting the formation of one preponderating power in the peninsula. For this reason every attempt toward the unification of Italy, or toward bringing it under one dominating power has always been opposed by the papacy.
Europe also opposed the unification of Italy for different reasons; but the desire to protect the temporal power of the Pope by preventing the unification of Italy was also a factor in European politics.
After the overthrow of the French domina tion in the 19th century, the Italian national sentiment gradually developed, and as the desire for the independence of Italy grew, the prob lem of the temporal power of the papacy was made a matter of serious consideration by the writers and political men of the day. But if in order to establish this federal idea and realize this beautiful ideal of Italian unity, she should despoil the Pope of his temporal power, Italy felt that she would incur the ill-feeling of Europe. Hence, unification seemed impossible. Hence, the neo-Guelphism of V. Gioberti, who originated the idea of making the Pope the head, the President, of the Italian federation.
But during the revolution of 1848-49, when the idea of the independence of the Piedmontese monarchy originated, it seemed necessary for the unification of Italy to abolish the temporal power of the Pope.
After the revolution of 1859 Gioberti's idea as proclaimed in his great work, (I1 Rinnova mento,' that Rome should be the capital of Italy, and that there should be a reform in Catholicism through which it would no longer be necessary that the Pope should hold tem poral power, seemed fulfilled in Italia Unita; and Cavour, the great statesman, proclaimed in the first Italian Parliament, held in Turin, that Rome was henceforth the capital, and declared that in Rome, Italy should proclaim the liberty of the Church, that is to say, granting to the Pope, by mutual agreement, independence in the exercise of his spiritual sovereignty over the Catholic world, and liberty to regulate the af fairs of the Italian church, thus abolishing the existing concordats and laws which were in force in several of the Italian states, after the manner of the other Catholic European states.
When Cavour died, the Roman law courts objected to all agreements entered into by Ca your, and the Catholic world endeavored to prevent Italy from taking possession of Rome; and as the pontifical states in 1860 were no longer able to govern themselves, the French occupation, begun in 1849, was continued, al though the Emperor Napoleon III in 1864 pledged himself to withdraw the French troops; but he did not do so until 1866, only to send them back again in 1867, when Garibaldi at tempted to take forcible possession of Rome. Italian statesmen in the years 1861 to 1870 endeavored to persuade Europe that should Italy take possession of Rome she would give ample guarantees of independence to the Pope and liberty to the Church, and thus they pre pared the way for an occupation to be under taken as soon as a favorable opportunity pre sented itself. And this occurred in 1870, when France, engaged in a war with Germany, was obliged to withdraw her troops, and soon, in addition to her other disasters, tame the fall of Napoleon, who had formed with Italy the agreement of 1864.