1823 papal conclave
The papal conclave held from 2 to 28 September 1823 ended with the election of Annibale della Genga to succeed the death recently deceased Pius VII as pope. Della Genga took the name Leo XII. Pius VII, who had been elected in 1800, had an unusually long pontificate, during which the Catholic Church had faced, in the French Revolution and its aftermath, a severe attack on its power and legitimacy. Pius himself had been a prisoner of Napoleon in France for six years. Description During Pius VII's papacy, the cardinals had tended to divide into two groups, the zelanti and the . The zelanti were more radically reactionary than the and wanted a highly centralised Church and vehement opposition to the secularising reforms that had resulted in France. The , though anti-liberal, were much more moderate and favoured a conciliatory approach to dealing with the problems that new ideologies and the incipient Industrial Revolution were creating. The leader of this faction was Pius VII's Cardinal Secretary of State, Ercole Consalvi, but the zelanti wanted a much less moderate pontiff and they set fervently to this task from the time of Pius VII's death. The length of Pius VII's papacy had