Anti-Separationist Pope On The Fast Track For Catholic Sainthood.

A 19th-century pope who condemned church-state separation as an "error" has taken a major step toward sainthood.

Pope Pius IX, who served as head of the Roman Catholic Church from 1846 to 1878, is a highly controversial figure with a record of hostility toward Jews and non-Catholic faiths. However, he was beatified by Pope John Paul II on Sept. 4, a move often seen as a precursor to sainthood.

Pius IX labored to assert the political authority of the church at a time when Italians were moving toward unity as a secular nation. In 1864 he issued a "Syllabus of Errors" purporting to list various theological errors denounced by the church.

Among the propositions listed in the Syllabus as errors are the belief that "the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church" and the idea that "Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true."

In the Syllabus, Pius also rejected the notion that "the Roman pontiff can and should reconcile and harmonize himself with progress, with liberalism, and with modern civilization."

Pius played a key role in mandating some of the church's most familiar theological beliefs. In 1854 he proclaimed the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the teaching that the mother of Jesus was born without original sin. In 1869 he convened a church council that, while condemning materialism and atheism, also approved the doctrine of papal infallibility, the belief that the popes speak without error on theological matters.

Given his strong views, Pius' relations with other religions were rocky. He confined Jews in Rome to a ghetto and once referred to them as "dogs," complaining that "there are too many of them present" in the city. In 1858 he sparked a worldwide uproar by permitting church police to seize a 6-year-old Jewish boy, Edgardo Mortara, who had been baptized as a Catholic by an illiterate serving gift in the Mortara home. Despite international appeals that the boy be given back to his parents, Mortara was raised at the Vatican; he became a priest upon reaching adulthood.

Adding contemporary fuel to the fire, a top Vatican official, the Rev. Daniel Ols of the Congregation for the Promotion of Saints, recently appeared to defend the church's actions in the Mortara case. Ols said he would still "find it beautiful" for a child to be baptized Catholic without his parents' knowledge, arguing that the "good of eternal life" would supercede the parents' wishes.

Jewish organizations criticized John Paul's decision to beatify Pius IX. In an Aug. 23 letter, the American Jewish Committee, the World Jewish Congress, the Anti-Defamation League and the Israel Jewish Council for Interreligious Relations called on the pope to reverse course, saying Pius falls "far short of saintliness."

John Paul apparently shrugged off these concerns. At the Vatican beatification ceremony, the pope said the 19th, century church leader was "much loved, but also hated and slandered." He added that Pius was an example of "unconditional adherence to the unchangeable storehouse of revealed truth" and saluted him for maintaining "profound serenity ... even in the midst of incomprehension and the attacks of many hostile people."

While Pius had his admirers during his time, he was also the object of bitter hatred, especially after he called in the French army to protect Vatican interests during attempts to merge the kingdoms of Italy into one nation that began in 1849. After unification, the church was stripped of most of its lands and political power, and Pius became a virtual prisoner in the Vatican. After his death, while Pius' body was being moved to a cemetery in Rome in 1878, an angry mob attacked the carriage and nearly succeeded in throwing his coffin into the Tiber River.

Perhaps hoping to ward off some of the criticism, John Paul beatified Pope John XXIII at the same time he took the action for Pius. John, pope from 1958-1963, was relatively moderate by papal standards. He convened the Second Vatican Council, popularly known as "Vatican II" which gave official church endorsement to religious toleration.

While Vatican II was seen as a step forward, the Catholic Church has continued over the years to proclaim its supremacy over other religions. On Sept. 5 the Vatican released a document bluntly asserting that the Catholic Church is the only "instrument for the salvation of all humanity" and calling non-Catholic religious bodies "defective."

The document asserted that followers of other religions may "receive divine grace" but added that they are "in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the church, have the fullness of the means of salvation."

About the same time, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican official in charge of ensuring doctrinal purity, wrote to bishops around the world and ordered them to stop using the term "sister churches" when referring to Protestant denominations.

Ratzinger wrote that the term "sister church" can only be applied to certain Orthodox denominations that have rituals and a hierarchy similar to Catholicism. All other churches, Ratzinger declared, are not equivalent to the Catholic Church. "It must be always clear that the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic universal church is not the sister, but the mother, of all the churches," he wrote.

Representatives from some Protestant denominations viewed the document as unnecessarily provocative. "The tone is certainly very disappointing and does not bear adequate witness to the good ecumenical progress made over the past 30 years," a spokesman for the Church of England told the London Daily Telegraph.