Pope Clement XIV
Pope Clement XIV reigned from 1769 to 1774 and suppressed the Society of Jesus. Born Giovanni Ganganelli near Rimini in 1705, the son of a physician, he joined the Franciscans, taught theology, and was made a cardinal in 1759. He was a scholar of moderate views with few enemies. He was elected after a conclave of three months dominated by a single question. The Bourbon courts of France, Spain, Naples and Portugal had already expelled the Jesuits from their territories and were demanding that the order be dissolved entirely, threatening schism and holding papal enclaves hostage. His predecessor Clement XIII had refused and died under the pressure. Ganganelli was understood to be willing to negotiate, though whether he gave any undertaking before his election is disputed and would have been simony. He temporised for four years, and in July 1773 issued the brief Dominus ac Redemptor, suppressing the Society worldwide. It gave no doctrinal grounds, arguing instead that the order had become a source of discord and that peace in the church required its removal. Some 23,000 members were dispersed, hundreds of colleges closed, and the missionary networks in Asia and the Americas collapsed. The superior general, Lorenzo Ricci, was imprisoned in Castel Sant'Angelo and died there without trial. The brief was not promulgated in Russia or Prussia, whose non-Catholic rulers valued Jesuit schools, and the order survived there until it was restored in 1814. Avignon and Benevento were returned to him. He died in September 1774, and rumours of poison circulated. He also commissioned the Vatican's Pio-Clementino museum.
- Lived: 1705 CE – 1774 CE
- Nationality: Italian
- Roles: pope, cleric
