Temporal power of the Holy See

The Holy See exercised sovereign and secular power, as distinguished from its spiritual and pastoral activity, while the pope ruled the Papal States in central Italy.

The Papal States ceased to exist following the capture of Rome in 1870 by the Royal Italian Army, after which its remaining territories were annexed to the Kingdom of Italy.

This, combined with Lombard military pressure to which the embattled empire could not respond effectively, eventually led to the establishment of the temporal power of the popes.

For over a thousand years popes ruled as sovereign over an amalgam of territories on the Italian peninsula known as the Papal States, from the capital, Rome.

The entry concerning Bellarmin reads: "Roberti Bellarmini Disputationes de Controversiis Christianae fidei adversus huius temporis haereticos.

[10] In November 1848, during the revolutions that swept Europe in that year, the assassination of his minister Pellegrino Rossi led Pope Pius IX to flee Rome.

Subsequently, the Constitution of the Roman Republic abolished papal temporal power, although the independence of the pope as head of the Catholic Church was guaranteed by article 8 of the Principi fondamentali.

This doctrinal view, however, initially proposed by Franciscan partisans in opposition to the prerogative of popes to contradict the more favorable decrees of their predecessors, faced significant resistance outside of Italy prior to and during the First Vatican Council.

[15] For practical purposes, the temporal power of the popes ended on 20 September 1870, when the Italian Army breached the Aurelian Walls at Porta Pia and entered Rome.