Of noble birth, Dei Conti was papal ambassador to Switzerland and to Portugal before Pope Clement XI made him cardinal (1706) and bishop of Osimo, Papal States (1709). He was elected pope on May 8, 1721. In the following year he invested the Holy Roman emperor Charles VI with sovereignty over the Kingdom of Naples. Innocent recognized James (the Old Pretender) as the king of England and promised him subsidies conditional upon the reestablishment of Roman Catholicism in England. Distrusting the Jesuits (Jesuit) and their missionaries in China, who modified Christian usage (in the “Chinese rites”) to attract converts, Innocent, threatening to suppress the order, commanded the Society of Jesus to obey Clement's bull of 1713, which prohibited these rites and practices.