Innocent IX

Pope Innocent IX (; ; 20 July 1519 – 30 December 1591), born Giovanni Antonio Facchinetti, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 29 October to 30 December 1591.

Prior to his short papacy, he had been a canon lawyer, diplomat, and chief administrator during the reign of Pope Gregory XIV (r. 1590–1591).

He entered the service of the influential Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. As papal legate to Venice, he helped negotiate the formation of the Holy League, an alliance of Spanish and Italian maritime powers to challenge the Ottoman Empire’s control of the eastern Mediterranean, and which resulted in victory at the Battle of Lepanto.

Biography Early life Giovanni Antonio Facchinetti was born in Bologna on 22 July 1519 to Antonio Della Noce from Cravegna and Francesca Cini from Croveo.

His father was a descendant of the noble Della Noce family of Ossola, but not himself wealthy. Giovanni Antonio Facchinetti did not go by Della Noce and instead assumed his father's modest ''soprannome. This appears to derive from a mistake made by a historian in 1906, who confused Novara (in Piedmont) with Nogara (in Verona) when interpreting ecclesiastical records. Facchinetti took his papal name to honor Pope Innocent III.

The cardinal protodeacon Andreas von Austria crowned Innocent IX as pontiff on 3 November 1591. He elevated two cardinals to the cardinalate in the only papal consistory of his papacy on 18 December 1591.

Mindful of the origin of his success, Innocent IX supported, during his two months' pontificate, the cause of Philip II and the Catholic League against Henry IV of France (r. 1589–1610) in the French Wars of Religion (1562–1598), where a Papal army was in the field.

His grandnephew Giovanni Antonio Cardinal Facchinetti de Nuce Jr., was one of two cardinals appointed during the weeks of Innocent IX's pontificate. A later member of the cardinalate was his great-grandnephew Cesare Facchinetti (made a cardinal in 1643).

Death

On 18 December, despite being ill, the pope made a pilgrimage of Rome's seven pilgrimage churches and caught a cold as a result. This became a heavy cough combined with a fever that led to his death shortly after he received Extreme Unction.

Innocent IX died in the early morning of 30 December 1591. He was buried in the Vatican Grottoes in a simple tomb.