Innocent X has strongly supported the independent…
October 1649 CE
Innocent X has strongly supported the independent Confederate Ireland during the Civil War in England and Ireland, over the objections of Mazarin and the Queen Mother, Henrietta Maria, exiled in Paris.
The Pope had sent as nuncio extraordinary to Ireland, Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, archbishop of Fermo, who had arrived at Kilkenny with a large quantity of arms and military supplies including twenty thousand pounds of gunpowder with a very large sum of money.
At Kilkenny, Rinuccini had been received with great honors, asserting in his Latin declaration that the object of his mission was to sustain the King, but above all to rescue from pains and penalties the Catholic people of Ireland in securing the free and public exercise of the Catholic religion, and the restoration of the churches and church property.
Oliver Cromwell has in the end restored Ireland to the Parliamentarian side, with great bloodshed, and after four fruitless years in Rinuccini returns in 1649 to Rome.