One of his first acts was to declare an amnesty for all the political prisoners held in the papal jails. Revolutionaries in Rome exploited Pius IX's concessions, and continuously stirred up the populous to exert pressure in order to obtain additional ones.And it escapes no one that many who had been generously given that pardon not only did not change their thoughts at all, as We were hoping, but instead, as they persisted each day more bitterly in their designs and machinations, there was nothing that they left undone, nothing that they did not dare, nothing that they did not try, to shake and overthrow the civil Principate of the Roman Pontiff and his government, as they had already been planning for a long time, and at the same time, they brought a most bitter war against Our Most Holy Religion.
Pius IX's first decision was to grant amnesty to the political prisoners held in the Vatican's dungeons. However, this move only served to fuel the flames of discontent among the revolutionaries in Rome, who used it as a pretext to launch a bitter campaign against the Pope and the Catholic Church.