Editing Pope Pius IX (section)

===United States===
{{Main|Pope Pius IX and the United States}}
[[File:George Peter Alexander Healy - John McCloskey - NPG.65.68 - National Portrait Gallery.jpg|thumb|Pius IX elevated [[John McCloskey]] as the first American to the [[College of Cardinals]] on 15 March 1875]]

Pope Pius IX approved on 7 February 1847 the unanimous request of the American bishops that the [[Immaculate Conception]] be invoked as the [[Patroness]] of the United States. Beginning in October 1862, the Pope began sending public letters to Catholic leaders in the United States calling for an end to the "destructive [[American Civil War|Civil War]]."<ref>Doyle, Don H. ''The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War'' (2015), p. 261.</ref> According to historian [[Don H. Doyle]], however, "During the American Civil War, the pope ... urged American bishops to call for peace at a time when peace meant separation, and privately he expressed strong sympathies with the South. The Confederacy sent envoys to enlist Pio Nono in their cause and came away boasting the most powerful pontiff in Europe had recognized the Confederacy. The pope said nothing to refute such claims...."<ref>Doyle, Don H., ''The Age of Reconstruction: How Lincoln's New Birth of Freedom Remade the World''. Princeton, NJ, and Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press (2024), p. 264.</ref>

The Vatican never recognized the [[Confederate States of America]] or sent any diplomats to it. However, in 1863 the pope did meet privately with a Confederate envoy and suggested gradual emancipation.<ref>Doyle, Don H. ''The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War'' (2015), p. 264.</ref> A letter of Pius IX to [[Jefferson Davis]] in December 1863, addressing him as "Praesidi foederatorum Americae regionum" (President of the federated regions of America), was not seen as recognition of the Confederacy, even by its own officials: Confederate Secretary of State [[Judah P. Benjamin]] interpreted it as "a mere inferential recognition, unconnected with political action or the regular establishment of diplomatic relations" without the weight of formal recognition.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=DuqdUu7EctIC&dq=a+mere+inferential+recognition&pg=PA1015 ''Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion''], p. 1015.</ref> Pius IX elevated Archbishop [[John McCloskey]] of New York as the first American to the [[College of Cardinals]] on 15 March 1875.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.fordhamprep.org/page.cfm?p=4829 |title=John Cardinal McCloskey |location=New York |publisher=Fordham Preparatory School |access-date=6 June 2016}}</ref>