Pontificate
The Revolution of 1830, which overthrew the House of Bourbon, had just inflicted a severe blow on the Catholic royalist party in France. Almost the first act of the new French government was to seize Ancona, thus throwing Italy, and particularly the Papal States, into a state of confusion and political upheaval. In the course of the struggle that ensued, it was more than once necessary to call in Austrian troops to fight the red-shirted republicans engaged in a guerrilla campaign. The conservative administration of the Papal States postponed their promised reforms after a series of bombings and assassination attempts. The replacement of Tommaso Bernetti by Luigi Lambruschini as Cardinal Secretary of State in 1836 did nothing to appease the situation.
Pope Gregory and Cardinal Lambruschini opposed basic technological innovations such as gas lighting and railways, believing that they would promote commerce and increase the power of the bourgeoisie, leading to demands for liberal reforms which would undermine the monarchical power of the Pope over central Italy. Gregory in fact banned railways in the Papal States, calling them chemins d'enfer (literally "ways of hell," a play on the French for railroad, chemin de fer, literally "iron road").
The insurrections at Viterbo in 1836, in various parts of the Legations in 1840, at Ravenna in 1843 and Rimini in 1845, were followed by wholesale executions and draconian sentences of hard labour and exile, but they did not bring the unrest within the Papal States under the control of the authorities. Gregory XVI made great expenditures for defensive, architectural and engineering works, and he lavished patronage on such scholars as Angelo Mai, Giuseppe Mezzofanti, and Gaetano Moroni. This largesse, however, significantly weakened the finances of the Papal States.
In 1839 Gregory issued an encyclical against the Atlantic slave trade, In Supremo Apostolatus, and canonized Veronica Giuliani, an Italian mystic. Other important encyclicals were Mirari Vos, on liberalism and religious indifferentism (issued on 15 August 1832), Quo Graviora, on the Pragmatic Constitution in the Rhineland (issued on 4 October 1833), and Singulari Nos, on the errors of Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais (issued on 25 June 1834).
During his reign five saints were canonized, thirty-three servants of God declared Blessed, (including the Augustinian Simon of Cascia}, many new orders were founded or supported, the devotion of the faithful to the Immaculate Mother of God increased, in private as in public life.
Gregory died on 1 June 1846, after a severe attack of facial erysipelas.
Read more about this topic: Pope Gregory XVI