sentences:  The French government, in the guise of ending the practices of feudalism, confiscated the incomes and benefices of the bishops and priests and made them employees of the state, with a fixed income and the obligation to swear an oath of loyalty to the French constitution.As in metropolitan France, the government program also included reducing the number of bishoprics and making them conform as far as possible with the civil administration's "departments".In accordance with the Concordat of 1801, and at the demand of the First Consul N. Bonaparte, Pope Pius VII was compelled to issue the bull "Gravissimis causis" (1 June 1803), in which the number of dioceses in Piedmont was reduced from seventeen to eight