Yesterday night the Catholic Church canonised a pope who is considered anti-semitic and a cruel fighter against Freedom, Democracy and Progress.

Pius IX, born as Giovanni Maria Mestai, was the last pope that held the position of a king. He gained his position in 1846, in the age of 54, and presided over the church for nearly 32 years.

Pius IX is considered one of the greatest dictators of the church, and used to behead all those who tried to undermine his position, or the position of the Chruch in the cities of Rome and Bologna. He referred to the Jews in one of his speeches "faithless, barking dogs". He reestablished the Jewish Ghetto of Rome and restricted the Jews of the city to it, forced them to baptise their children and limited their rights to work and acquire education.

The most famous incident in this regard was the case of the child Edgardo Mortara: the six-year-old Jewish boy was torn from his mother's arms by the Vatican Army, in the claim that he was baptized at the age of two, and therefore Jews have no right to raise him. Mortara was lead from Bologna to a monastery in Rome where he became a loyal priest.

In 1864 he issued a series of regulations, according to which all those who supported the Democratic reforms in various European countries, or the unification of Italy, were to be condemned to excommunication from the Church. In 1870 he gathered the leadership of the Church and issued an edict that stated that the pope is infallible and that his rightness is eternal regardless of his actions.

1870 was also the year Pius IX lost most of his power, as Giuseppe Garibaldi unified Italy and conquered Rome. The pope had to restrict himself to the Vatican and renounce his kingship.

The Catholic Church says that he is canonised not for all the above things, but rather for his "noble adherence to the Catholic Religion".

I would like to remind you all that this is not the first anti-semitic saint the Church has proclaimed (even recently), and there are still also quite a few children-saints that were canonised after they were supposedly murdered by Jews who needed their blood to make matzos.

Is this the face the Vatican wants to show the world these days?