When this devoted friend of the Society died, Cardinal Cappellari, the learned Camaldolese monk, ascended the pontifical throne and took the name Gregory XVI. Fifteen days afterwards all Italy was in the throes of Revolution. The Carbonari were in control, and as usual the Society felt the first blow. On February 17th, at the same hour, the colleges of Spoleto, Fano, Modena, Reggio, Forlì and Ferrara were attacked and the masters and pupils thrown out in the street. A decree of banishment was issued, but the people arose in their wrath, suppressed the insurrection and the Fathers were re-instated.
When peace was restored, the Pope gave a notable illustration of his esteem for the Society. He summoned all the religious of the various orders in Rome to the Gesù to make the Spiritual Exercises. A short time afterwards, at the instance of the Propaganda, he entrusted to it the administration of several colleges and formulated the concessions in the most eulogistic of terms, declaring among other things that a long and happy experience from the very beginning of the Institute until the present time, and in divers parts of the world, had shown the Holy See the incontestable aptitude of the Fathers for directing both clerical and secular schools. The same conviction, he said later, also prompted him to give them the Illyrian College.
The cholera which was sweeping over Europe finally reached Rome. The Pope had already established ambulances and hospitals in various parts of the city, and his appeal to the religious sentiments of the people prevented the frightful orgies which had disgraced London, Madrid and Paris when similarly afflicted. Cardinal Odescalchi, soon to be a Jesuit, was especially conspicuous in tranquillizing the populace, and a solemn ceremony in which the entire city participated is especially worthy of note, since it was intended by the Sovereign Pontiff to be an official announcement that while the pestilence lasted, the Jesuit Fathers were to be the principal channel of the Papal charities. The miraculous picture of the Blessed Virgin was carried in procession from St. Mary Major's to the Gesù and, in spite of the stifling heat, the Pope himself, surrounded by his cardinals, the clergy and the principal civil officials, accompanied the picture through the kneeling multitudes in the streets, and placed it on the altar in the Jesuit church, which thus became the prayer centre for the city while the pestilence lasted.
On August 23, 1837, it struck the city at the same moment in several places. Two princesses were its first victims, but the Pope in person went wherever the harvest of death was greatest, and his example inspired every one to emulate his devotion. Naturally members of the Society did their duty in those terrible days when 9,372 people were attacked by the disease and more than 5,000 perished. By the month of October the plague had ceased.
Cardinal Odescalchi, who had won the affection of the people of Rome by his heroic devotion to them at this crisis, astounded them in the following year by the renunciation of the exalted dignities which he enjoyed in the Church and in the State, for he was a prince — in order to assume the humble garb and subject himself to the obedience of the Society of Jesus. The Pope and the cardinals endeavored to dissuade him from taking the step, pleading the interests of the Church, but he persisted, and on the day of his admission, December 8, 1838, he wrote to Father Roothaan to say that he could not describe the happiness that he felt, and he requested the General to deal with him as he would with the humblest of his subjects. He was then fifty-two years old. He died at Modena, on August 17, 1841, and had thus been able as one of its sons to celebrate the third centenary of the Society, which occurred in 1840. There was little if any public declaration, however, of this anniversary, for Father Roothaan had sent a reminder to all the provinces that the dangers of the time made it advisable to keep all manifestations of happiness and of gratitude to God within the limits of the domestic circle.
In 1836 an imperial edict in answer to a popular demand permitted the Jesuits to establish schools anywhere in the limits of the Austrian empire and to follow their own methods of teaching independently of university control. The emperor and empress honored by their presence the first college opened in Verona. Other cities of Italy invited the Fathers to open schools, and Metternich, who is sometimes cited as their enemy, allowed them to install themselves at Venice, where a remnant of antagonism had remained, ever since the time of Paolo Sarpi; but by St. Ignatius Day in 1844 that had all vanished and the patriarch, the doge, the nobility, the clergy and the people united in giving the Fathers a cordial welcome.
In the Island of Malta, which had become a British possession, the inhabitants sent a letter of thanks to Lord Stanley, the secretary of State, for having granted them a college of the Society. The letter had 4,000 signatures. The Two Sicilies welcomed the Society in 1804 and restored to it the Professed house, along with the Collegium Maximum and the old churches; other establishments were begun elsewhere in the kingdom. After the Jesuits had been expelled by the Carbonari in 1820 the usual reaction occurred and they were soon back at their posts. The cholera of 1837 gave them a new hold on the affection of the people, and for the moment their position in the kingdom appeared to be absolutely secure.
During the fifteen years of his pontificate, Gregory XVI published no less than fifteen rescripts in favor of the Society. On March 30, 1843, he empowered Georgetown College in Washington to confer philosophical and theological degrees. In the following year he restored the Illyrian College, which Gregory XIII had established at Loreto, and gave it to the Society together with the Villa Leonaria. At the request of Cardinal Franzoni, the prefect of the Propaganda, he turned over the Urban College to the Society, and in the rescript announcing the transfer he said: "Whereas the Congregation of the Propaganda was convinced that the instruction of the young clerics who are to be sent to foreign parts to spread the light of the Gospel and to cultivate the vineyard of the Lord could not be better trained for such a task than by those religious who make it the special work of their Institute to form youth in piety, literature and science, and who always strive intensely in whatever they undertake to promote the greater glory of God; and whereas, from the very establishment of the Society of Jesus, the Church has had daily experience of the aptitude of the Fathers of the Society in the education of youth both in secular and clerical pursuits in all parts of the world; and whereas the testimony which even the enemies of the Holy See and of the Church are compelled by the evidence of things to pay to the Society of Jesus for the excellent education which the youth of their colleges receive, we do therefore assent most willingly to the petition of the lord cardinal of the Congregation of the Propaganda."
On October 11, 1838, a chair of canon law was erected in the Roman College. In the following year on March 5, the Pontiff gave the Society the College of Fermo, and on September 28, the College of Camerino. In brief, there was no end of the spiritual favors which Gregory XVI bestowed on the Society through its General, Father Roothaan, whom he honored with his most intimate friendship.
Pius IX succeeded Gregory XVI, and although he greatly esteemed Rosmini, who was attacked for his philosophical views by the Jesuits, chiefly by Melia, Passaglia, Rozaven and Ballerini, that did not affect the great Pontiff's affection for the Society. Hence when the procurators at their meeting of 1847 presented themselves to His Holiness to protest against the charge that they were averse to his governmental policies, he assured them that he was well aware of the calumnious nature of the accusation. He repeated the same words in 1853 to the electors of the twenty-second general congregation, and in 1860, when Garibaldi expelled the Jesuits from the Two Sicilies, Pope Pius not only welcomed the refugees to Rome, but, when they arrived, went in person to console them. "Let us suffer with equanimity," he said, "whatever God wishes. Persecution always brings courage to Catholics. What you have suffered is passed. What is to come who knows? It is splendid," he said as he withdrew, "to see that even when you are scourged you do not cease to work."