Pope Relocation Plausibility

Canis Lupis

Taking @Big Schwartz 's advice, I am starting a thread to answer this question I posted in Miscellaneous (reposted here for convenience):

"I'm toying with an idea for my WTLB TL (see signature) whereby Pope Pius IX and the entire Catholic hierarchy is chased out of Italy either by force in the 1870s (an effort led by radical Italian unificationists) or leaves Italy voluntarily out of fear of such a scenario. Instead, the Catholic Church relocates to the United Germanic Kingdoms (a Catholic-majority confederation made up of the Kingdoms of Bavaria, Saxony, and Württemberg). I know IOTL Pope Pius IX reached out to Bismarck seeking Prussian asylum in 1870 after the Capture of Rome in 1870, but nothing came of this since Kaiser Wilhelm I was uninterested. I'm wondering how plausible it would be to have the Catholic Church abandon Italy for Bavaria (or even Switzerland). My thinking is that such an abandonment would bring conflict upon Italy from the wider Catholic world, especially a more-right wing and pro-Catholic France (which at the time ITTL is under the control of Francois Bazaine, serving as regent to the eventual Emperor Napoleon IV, and which managed to avoid a Franco-Prussian War) and its close ally Spain (ITTL under the rule of Maximilian von Habsburg). This would potentially lead to a Franco-German War in the mid-1870s with France and Spain uniting against Germany and Italy, possibly with Austria and/or Russia joining in (at least financially) on the French side.

However, before I get into the ramifications, would such an idea of Pius abandoning Rome for an ostensibly more pro-Catholic nation like Switzerland or Bavaria be plausible?"

To expand this into separate thread territory, I guess I'm just curious what the plausibility of the Catholic Church (or even just the pope) leaving Italy during the Italian Unification would be, circumstances of my TL be damned. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Feel free by the way if you have any questions about the pope leaving Rome and relocating in some other period to post those questions here as well. Though this thread mainly concerns the plausibility of relocation during the Risorgimento, this thread is open for discussing other possible papal relocations in history.
 

Whanztastic

I think you’d have to be specific for what city or Catholic institution the Pope and Vatican are relocating to. Is their a sufficiently large or prestigious cathedral or loaned palace to, at least temporarily, house them?
 

DocJamore

The Papacy would relocate temporarily to a culturally Catholic country who could promise it autonomy. Avignon or some location in France was my first thought. If France is not available, then perhaps somewhere in Spain or Portugal. The whole time, they would probably be in negotiations to return to Rome with the Italian government.
 
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Wendell

One proposal was to set the Pope up in Trent. Another possibility was Malta. Bismarck floated offering the pope Mainz.
 

Iserlohn

Wendell said:
One proposal was to set the Pope up in Trent. Another possibility was Malta. Bismarck floated offering the pope Mainz.
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I've more often seen Fulda being floated for that, since it also had become the site of the German bishops' conference in 1867 and while being the site of a bishopric, it wasn't an archbishopric like Mainz.
 

Minchandre

Wendell said:
One proposal was to set the Pope up in Trent. Another possibility was Malta. Bismarck floated offering the pope Mainz.
Click to expand...
Mainz is religiously the best option. Of all the sees in the world, the only Holy See was in Rome...and Mainz. The Archbishop of Mainz was officially considered to be the main Catholic authority north of the Alps.

The problem is that a pope might not trust the ambitious Protestant chancellor of an ambitious mostly-Protestant country, especially when Bismarck was known to have doubts about Catholic loyalty.

France is attractive, as it combines being almost completely Catholic with an aggressive secularism that will make it hard to interfere with Church business too obviously. Avignon will either add or subtract legitimacy.

Spain or Portugal are also good options, as modestly powerful states not too entangled with the great game developing, and completely Catholic populations.

Malta is a very good option. Small, neutral, Catholic...except the British would probably want to keep basing rights indefinitely. If the Pope can live with that, he can probably even be sovereign on Malta, even if a de facto British protectorate.

Somewhere in Belgium might also be a good option. Again, small, Catholic, and neutral. Maybe setting up in an enclave in Liege?
 
LostInNewDelhi

LostInNewDelhi

Monaco would be pretty funny, maybe they could clear out a casino and refurbish it with the profits of the rest. Not sure how well the monks and cardinals would share the Riviera with tourists in increasingly daring swimwear.

San Marino offers the advantage of being in Italy geographically and getting a guarantee of independence from Garibaldi himself for sheltering liberal refugees earlier. How the turn tables.

A decision made by one pope might be changed by a successor, there may have to be some provision where the popes either stay Italian out of "neutrality" or there's some scheme to mix in non-Italians in a way that offends no one.

Spain may make a very serious bid, to try and hold their empire together on a more-than-national basis; the hold-up would be its nominal liberalism, which did affect how the elite chose to present and govern its affairs. Some kind of Carlist (traditionalist-neofeudal) Spain would have no such hesitation, but the ground was being dug out from under Carlism by the Basque and Catalan industrialization of the time.
 

Canis Lupis

Thank you all for the suggestions! This has been an incredibly interesting discussion, and feel free to continue, but I think I am settling on Mainz. That seems to present, in my TL specifically, the most interesting scenario. Thank you all again, and like I said, feel free to continue discussing papal relocation as a result of the Risorgimento or other events in Italy! Papal history is a fascinating subject that is, except for possibly in medieval-centric timelines, far too underexplored!
 

Wendell

Iserlohn said:
I've more often seen Fulda being floated for that, since it also had become the site of the German bishops' conference in 1867 and while being the site of a bishopric, it wasn't an archbishopric like Mainz.
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Fulda works too as it was passed around a bit in the nineteenth century.
Minchandre said:
Mainz is religiously the best option. Of all the sees in the world, the only Holy See was in Rome...and Mainz. The Archbishop of Mainz was officially considered to be the main Catholic authority north of the Alps.

The problem is that a pope might not trust the ambitious Protestant chancellor of an ambitious mostly-Protestant country, especially when Bismarck was known to have doubts about Catholic loyalty.
Click to expand...
Bismarck's suspicions about German Catholics is precisely while he hoped to host the papacy on German soil and under German protection.
 
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