The reading
How it began
Innocent XI dies in 1689, having lived in the Apostolic Palace as if it were a cell. The process, delayed by politics for centuries, recorded a preserved body. Pius XII beatifies him in 1956. The relics are in the Vatican basilica.
The day itself
Benedetto Odescalchi died on 12 August 1689 after a pontificate spent resisting Louis XIV, funding the relief of Vienna in 1683, and living, by the standards of a baroque pope, with an austerity that irritated the court. The tomb was opened in later centuries and the body found unusually preserved. Pius XII beatified him on 7 October 1956. He has not been canonized. The body lies in St. Peter’s, in the Chapel of the Transfiguration, dressed in papal vestments, the face visible in a way few popes are shown. The delay in his cause was political: France remembered a pope who had refused to make bishops into civil servants. Preservation did not shorten that argument. When you stand at the glass, you are looking at a beatified pope, an ascetic, and a Roman body that did not follow the ordinary timetable. You are not looking at a defined miracle, and the Church has not said you are.
Reading
How to read Blessed Innocent XI
A pope who spent little and prayed much, kept. The sign sits awkwardly on the memory of papal courts. That is useful.
Church status
How this sign has been received
Church-approved
Beatified 1956. Relics in St. Peter’s. Not a canonized universal feast of the same rank as Pius X, but a recognized blessed with an intact memory of the body.
Sources
- St. Peter’s Basilica
- Pius XII, beatification of Innocent XI
For the classroom
Blessed Innocent XI (Died 1689; body in St. Peter’s, St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican). Grade in this encyclopedia: Church-approved. The pope of the relief of Vienna, an ascetic in a baroque court. When the tomb was opened the body was found unusually preserved. He is beatified, and rests in St. Peter’s.
