While Canadians grappled with the unpopular Union of 1840, a dramatic power struggle unfolded thousands of miles away. In Rome, Pope Pius IX envisioned a unified Italy under his own presidential rule – a Confederation of Italian states.

However, Italian nationalists had a very different vision. The assassination of Pope Pius IX’s prime minister, Pellegrino Rossi, in 1848, ignited a period of intense upheaval. From 1859 to 1866, nationalists systematically conquered Italian territories, culminating in a siege of the Vatican itself in 1870. The Pope found himself ironically protected by French and Spanish troops, a situation described poignantly by English priest and convert John Henry Newman as being “protected from his own people by foreign bayonets.”

Later that year, Pius IX’s declaration of Papal Infallibility, asserting the Church’s independence from secular authority, drew a striking comparison from Father Newman. He likened the Pope’s bold move to “nothing less than shooting Niagara,” perhaps in a papal canoe, highlighting the risky nature of this assertion of power.