The best bet would probably be during the 1848 revolutions, if the Pope embraced the liberal/nationalist movement they could probably manage to throw Austria out of Lombardy-Venetia. OTL this was (IIRC) more or less what the more pie-in-the-sky liberals were imagining but the pope at the time was a staunch reactionary... maybe get an Austrophobic pope on the throne?
That's literally exactly what the OP calls for, though. The question is how you get there, not what the end state is.Though I guess you could have a sort of Italian confederation with meetings of the various states meeting in Rome. The Pope could have a ceremonial role akin to that of the British monarch, with the delegates from the different states providing the actual government.
That's literally exactly what the OP calls for, though. The question is how you get there, not what the end state is.
Being the head of state by definition means having the ceremonial role of representing said state in public. In some states this is combined with the actually powerful role of being head of government, but that's not universal, and the OP didn't request that the Pope had anything other than the ceremonial part. Similarly, although the OP didn't specify that the exact structure of the federation, the fact that it is a federation by definition means that there are component states with their own powers; further detail isn't necessary so as not to limit our creativity and thinking.No, the OP just specifies an Italian federation with the Pope as head of state. That's not as precise as a confederation governed by delegates from the respective Italian states with the Pope having a ceremonial role.
Being the head of state by definition means having the ceremonial role of representing said state in public. In some states this is combined with the actually powerful role of being head of government, but that's not universal, and the OP didn't request that the Pope had anything other than the ceremonial part. Similarly, although the OP didn't specify that the exact structure of the federation, the fact that it is a federation by definition means that there are component states with their own powers; further detail isn't necessary so as not to limit our creativity and thinking.
Basically, you're just splitting hairs.
Austria loses more spectacularly in the Second Independence War, Napoleon III doesn't balk, Sardinia gets Veneto but not the historical excuse they used to wiggle out of Napoleon's plans for the peninsula.
There were two attempts to set up such a confederation in the 19th century: the first in the 1840s, when a group of moderate Catholic thinkers (spearheaded by Gioberti) proposed a loose Italian Confederation under the presidency of the pope, loosely patterned on the German Confederation; the second one between 1859 and 1860, when Louis Napoleon who was trying to extricate himself from the failure of his attempt to replace Austrian influence in Italy with a French one floated again the idea (although he also promised to whomever he was talking to different arrangements: in the word of the British Ambassador in Turin: "No one spoke so few words and told so many lies").
The Gioberti's proposal floundered because of the opposition of the other Italian states (and of Austria): it was not even possible to agree on the terms of a customs union, much less on a confederation; then the Spring of the Nations came, and the Confederation idea went into the dustbin of history.
Louis Napoleon's gambit was less than serious: Cavour's skills in organizing plebiscites in the territories of the former Duchies and Papal Legations swept everything away. In any case the pope himself (the notorious and never enough vilified Pius IX) refused to countenance any reform, much less to grant independence to the Legations and Romagna
I'd say that the apparent liberalism of card. Mastai Ferretti is mostly due a comparison to his predecessor (Gregory XVI, who considered railways a tool of the devil) and his main contender in the conclave, Card. Lambruschini, both of them reactionaries of the deepest dye. He was elected by a coalition of moderates and liberal, but was not a man made for modern times. Even if he allowed papal troops and volunteers to mobilize and march towards north Italy (but with the order not to go beyond the borders of the papal states) he soon repented, and made a famous and damaging speech in April 1848 stating that the pope could not take part in a war between states.It is worth noting that Mastai Ferretti was considered a liberal and "W Pio IX" was scribbled everywhere by Italian revolutionaries in 1848... They wered deluded, ok, but it is also true that Pius initially committed troops against Austria (papal army against an Habsburg emperor, truly real history has some ASB moments...) and enacted some little reforms after his election. Was he scared by the radical turn of 1848, in particular by the murdrer of his minister Pellegrino Rossi? Or was his initial liberalism vastly overrated? Probably the second, but be sure that if you avoid Pio IX it is very likely that you will get Lambruschini as a pope and he truly was an ultra reactionary...
Would Lambruschini be a better pope? Probably not, but maybe not a worse one after all: better an open reactionary than a hidden one with a thin veneer of fake liberalism.
I agree about that, but if the premise is a papal-led Italian Confederation a reformer is needed, not a reactionary, unless it is to be a very short-lived confederation, built on French bayonets and collapsing soon after French attention is taken by other, more pressing, matters.
I was wondering whether a possibility would be the election of a pope wholly concerned with spirituak matters (a sort of modern Celestine V so to say), who however cannot imagine actually voluntarily renouncing to the Patrimonium Petri. He could be a good candidate for a figurehead Pope, with the actual running of the Papal States given to secular administartors. Again Pellegrino Rossi comes to the mind as someone who could be capable of doing aomething about it.
I think you need an almost impossible situation of Austria not quashing 1848 and Sardinia not militarily dominating, a bit like I had in mind in my aborted 1848 timeline (Dall'Alpe a Sicilia). Imagine: The Austrian armies suffer worse reverses i Italy and the Hungarians recall their regiments early. In order to save the Empire Franz Josef is persuaded to come to the negotiating table, but he doesn't trust neithee Milan nor the insurgents in Veneto and Lombardy, so he surrenders those territories to Papal authority. The authority of an alt-Pio IX who is respected by all and.... Nah it is never going to work...