Pope Pius VIII

Francesco Saverio Maria Felice Castiglioni was born in November 1761 and became head of the Catholic Church on 31 March 1829. He welcomed the Catholic Emancipation in the United Kingdom that same year, though he accepted the July Revolution that toppled the French monarchy in 1830 with far less enthusiasm. His 1830 brief Litteris altero abhinc set the terms for marriages between Catholics and Protestants: a blessing required guarantees that children would be raised Catholic. He died on 30 November 1830, less than two years after his election, the shortest pontificate of the century and one tha…