In this chair
The longest verified pontificate. Defined the Immaculate Conception in 1854. Lost the Papal States. The pope who received Lourdes as a confirmation he had not asked for.
255 of 267 · Blessed
Pope Bl. Pius the Ninth
Bishop of Rome, 1846 – 1878
Signs of this pontificate
Wonders this archive keeps that belong to the years he sat, or that he himself stood before.
MarianChurch-approved
Our Lady of Lourdes
Massabielle, Lourdes1858
Between 11 February and 16 July 1858, in a limestone cave on the edge of Lourdes that the town used as a rubbish dump, a fourteen-year-old miller’s daughter named Bernadette Soubirous saw a young woman in white eighteen times. The woman spoke the dialect of the valley. She asked for prayer, for penance, for a spring of water, for a chapel, and for a procession. On 25 March, the feast of the Annunciation, she gave a name the child had never been taught: “I am the Immaculate Conception.” The bishop of Tarbes judged the apparitions worthy of belief in 1862. The spring still runs. The sick still come. Bernadette died at thirty-five, still ill, in a convent at Nevers.
NatureLong veneration
Our Lady of the Snows
Esquiline Hill, RomeTradition: 5 August 358
A childless Roman couple vow their fortune to Mary. On a hot August night, snow falls on the Esquiline in the shape of a church. The basilica of St. Mary Major stands there.