Pope Pius VI (Italian: Pio VI; born Count Angelo Onofrio Melchiorre Natale Giovanni Antonio called Giovanni Angelo or Giannangelo Braschi, 25 December 1717 – 29 August 1799) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 15 February 1775 to his death in August 1799.

Bandi Braschi was baptized in Cesena two days later on 27 December and was given the baptismal name of Angelo Onofrio Melchiorre Natale Giovanni Antonio.

The latter managed to convince Pope Clement XIV to curb his zeal by promoting him to the cardinalate and accordingly on 26 April 1773 he was made Cardinal-Priest of Sant'Onofrio.

On the other hand, the pro-Jesuit Zelanti faction believed him to be secretly sympathetic towards the order and expected him to remedy the wrongs the Jesuits suffered in the previous pontificate.

[citation needed] The early acts of Pius VI gave fair promise of reformist rule and tackled the problem of corruption in the Papal States.

He reprimanded Prince Potenziani, the governor of Rome, for failing to adequately deal with corruption in the city, appointed a council of cardinals to remedy the state of the finances and relieve the pressure of imposts, called to account Nicolò Bischi for the spending of funds intended for the purchase of grain, reduced the annual disbursements by denying pensions to many prominent people, and adopted a reward system to encourage agriculture.

There the social and ecclesiastical reforms which had been undertaken by Emperor Joseph II and his minister Kaunitz, as a way of influencing appointments within the Catholic hierarchy, were seen as such a threat touched to papal authority that Pius VI adopted the exceptional course of travelling in person to Vienna.

More serious disagreements arose with Leopold II, later emperor, and Scipione de' Ricci, bishop of Pistoia and Prato, upon the questions of proposed liberal reforms to the Church in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.

The papal bull Auctorem fidei, issued on 28 August 1794, is a condemnation of the Gallican and Jansenist propositions and tendencies of the Synod of Pistoia (1786).

[11] Pius VI also deepened and expanded the harbors of Terracina and Porto d'Anzio, a major center of Pontifical trade.

[6] At the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Pius VI witnessed the suppression of the old Gallican Church as well as the confiscation of pontifical and ecclesiastical possessions in France.

King Louis XVI of France was executed via guillotine on 21 January 1793, and his daughter Marie Thérèse petitioned Rome for the canonization of her father.

Pius VI hailed the late king as a martyr on 17 June 1793 in a meeting with cardinals, giving hope to a potential possibility of sainthood.

In 1820, two decades following the death of Pius VI, the Congregation of Rites put an end to the possible sainthood since it was impossible to prove the king died for religious reasons rather than political ones.

[7] General Louis-Alexandre Berthier marched to Rome, entered it unopposed on 10 February 1798, and, proclaiming a Roman Republic, demanded of the pope the renunciation of his temporal authority.

The French declaration of war against Tuscany led to his removal (he was escorted by the Spaniard Pedro Gómez Labrador, Marquis of Labrador) by way of Parma, Piacenza, Turin and Grenoble to the citadel of Valence, the chief town of Drôme where he died six weeks after his arrival, on 29 August 1799,[7] having then reigned longer than any pope since Saint Peter.