Page:Completecatechis00deharich.djvu/71

 and died a captive, at Valence in France, so now He did not abandon her to her enemies. Napoleon was vanquished by the Confederate Powers of Europe, and dispossessed of his crown, and the Pope reentered triumphant into Rome (a.d. 1814).

48. With the establishment of peace, after the Napoleonic wars, in 1815, a more favorable era opened for the Church. In France she recovered some of her old prosperity. What has been called the Catholic Revival, began, first in Germany, to the great progress of religion, and afterwards in England. In 1829 the disabilities under which Irish and British Catholics had so long labored were removed. A few years after, in England, the hierarchy, which had been suppressed at the time of the Reformation, was restored; numerous and notable conversions from Protestantism took place; and the number of Catholics and Catholic institutions has since grown very rapidly. The infidel doctrines, however, of the French philosophers and subsequent free-thinkers have continued to spread unbelief, so that the Church has to contend everywhere with a spirit of irreligion.

In 1848 Pius IX. was obliged to quit Rome through the machinations of Italian revolutionists. During his short exile he received the respectful sympathy of the Catholic world; and, in 1850, amid the rejoicings of the Eternal City, he returned to his See.

In 1869 Pope Pius IX. convoked the General Council of the Vatican, which defined the dogma of the Pope's