Pope Leo XIII

Archbishop Pecci enters Perugia in 1846

In 1843, Pecci had been named papal assistant. From 1846 to 1877, he was considered a popular and successful Archbishop-Bishop of Perugia. In 1847, after Pope Pius IX granted unlimited freedom for the press in the Papal States,[12] Pecci, who had been highly popular in the first years of his episcopate, became the object of attacks in the media and at his residence.[13] In 1848, revolutionary movements developed throughout Western Europe, including France, Germany and Italy. Austrian, French and Spanish troops reversed the revolutionary gains but at a price for Pecci and the Catholic Church, who could not regain their former popularity.

Pecci called a provincial council to reform the religious life in his dioceses. He invested in enlarging the seminary for future priests and in hiring new and prominent professors, preferably Thomists. He called on his brother Giuseppe Pecci, a noted Thomist scholar, to resign his professorship in Rome and to teach in Perugia instead.[14] His own residence was next to the seminary, which facilitated his daily contacts with the students.

Archbishop Pecci aids the poor in Perugia

Pecci developed several activities in support of Catholic charities. He founded homeless shelters for boys, girls and elderly women. Throughout his dioceses, he opened branches of a Bank, Monte di Pietà, which focused on low-income people and provided low-interest loans.[15] He created soup kitchens, which were run by the Capuchins. In the consistory of 19 December 1853, he was elevated to the College of Cardinals, as Cardinal-Priest of S. Crisogono.[9] In light of continuing earthquakes and floods, he donated all resources for festivities to the victims. Much of the public attention turned on the conflict between the Papal States and Italian nationalism, which aimed at the Papal States' annihilation to achieve the Unification of Italy.

Pecci defended the papacy and its claims. When Italian authorities expropriated convents and monasteries of Catholic orders, turning them into administration or military buildings, Pecci protested but acted moderately. When the Italian state took over Catholic schools, Pecci, fearing for his theological seminary, simply added all secular topics from other schools and opened the seminary to nontheologians.[16] The new government also levied taxes on the Church and issued legislation according to which all episcopal or papal utterances were to be approved by the government before their publication.[17]

On 8 December 1869, an ecumenical council, which became known as the First Vatican Council, was to take place in the Vatican per Pope Pius IX. Pecci was likely well informed since the Pope named his brother Giuseppe to help prepare the event.

During the 1870s, in his last years in Perugia, Pecci addressed the role of the Church in modern society several times, defining the Church as the mother of material civilization because it upheld human dignity of working people, opposed the excesses of industrialization and developed large-scale charities for the needy.[18]

In August 1877, on the death of Cardinal Filippo de Angelis, Pope Pius IX appointed him Camerlengo, which required him to reside in Rome.[19]

Pope Pius IX died on 7 February 1878,[19] and during his closing years the liberal press had often insinuated that the Kingdom of Italy should take a hand in the conclave and occupy the Vatican. However the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) and the sudden death of Victor Emmanuel II (9 January 1878) distracted the government's attention.

In the conclave, the cardinals faced varied questions and discussed issues like church–state relations in Europe, specifically Italy; divisions in the church and the status of the First Vatican Council. It was also debated that the conclave be moved elsewhere, but Pecci decided otherwise. On 18 February 1878, the conclave assembled in Rome. Cardinal Pecci was elected on the third ballot and chose the name Leo XIII.[19] He was announced to the people and later crowned on 3 March 1878.

He retained the administration of the Perugia see until 1880.

Pope Leo XIII began his pontificate with a friendly letter to Tsar Alexander II in which he reminded the Russian monarch of the millions of Catholics living in his empire who would like to be good Russian subjects if their dignity were respected.

After the assassination of Alexander II, the Pope sent a high ranking representative to the coronation of his successor, Alexander III, who was grateful and asked for all religious forces to unify. He asked the Pope to ensure that his bishops abstain from political agitation. Relations improved further when Pope Leo XIII, because of Italian considerations, distanced the Vatican from the Rome-Vienna-Berlin alliance, and helped to facilitate a rapprochement between Paris and St. Petersburg.

Under Otto von Bismarck, the anti-Catholic Kulturkampf in Prussia led to significant restrictions on the Catholic Church in Imperial Germany, including the Jesuits Law of 1872. During Leo's papacy, compromises were informally reached and the anti-Catholic attacks subsided.[29]

The Centre Party in Germany represented Catholic interests and was a force for social change. It was encouraged by Leo's support for social welfare legislation and the rights of working people. Leo's forward-looking approach encouraged Catholic Action in other European countries, where the social teachings of the Church were incorporated into the agenda of Catholic parties, particularly the Christian democratic parties, which became an acceptable alternative to socialist parties. Leo's social teachings were reiterated throughout the 20th century by his successors.

In his Memoirs[30] Kaiser Wilhelm II discussed the "friendly, trustful relationship that existed between me and Pope Leo XIII." During Wilhelm's third visit to Leo: "It was of interest to me that the Pope said on this occasion that Germany must be the sword of the Catholic Church. I remarked that the old Roman Empire of the German nation no longer existed, and that conditions had changed. But he adhered to his words."

Leo XIII was the first pope to come out strongly in favour of the French Republic, upsetting many French monarchists.[31]

In the light of a climate hostile to the Church, Leo continued the policies of Pius IX towards Italy without major modifications.[32] In his relations with the Italian state, Leo continued the Papacy's self-imposed incarceration in the Vatican stance and continued to insist that Italian Catholics should not vote in Italian elections or hold any elected office. In his first consistory in 1879, he elevated his older brother, Giuseppe, to the cardinalate. He had to defend the freedom of the Church against what Catholics considered Italian persecutions and attacks in the area of education, expropriation and violation of Catholic Churches, legal measures against the Church and brutal attacks, culminating in anticlerical groups attempting to throw the body of the deceased Pope Pius IX into the Tiber on 13 July 1881.[33] The Pope even considered moving his residence to Trieste or Salzburg, two cities in Austria, an idea that Emperor Franz Joseph I gently rejected.[34]

Among the activities of Leo XIII that were important for the English-speaking world, he restored the Scottish hierarchy in 1878. The following year, on 12 May 1879, he raised to the rank of cardinal the convert clergyman John Henry Newman,[35] who would eventually be beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 and canonized by Pope Francis in 2019. In British India, too, Leo established a Catholic hierarchy in 1886 and regulated some longstanding conflicts with the Portuguese authorities. A Papal Rescript (20 April 1888) condemned the Irish Plan of Campaign and all clerical involvement in it as well as boycotting, followed in June by the papal encyclical "Saepe Nos"[36] that was addressed to all the Irish bishops. Of outstanding significance, not least for the English-speaking world, was Leo's encyclical Apostolicae curae on the invalidity of the Anglican orders, published in 1896. In 1899, he declared St Bede the Venerable a Doctor of the Church.

Leo XIII welcomed the elevation of Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg to the Bulgarian Principality in 1886. A fellow Catholic, whose wife is a member the Italian house of Bourbon-Parma, the two had a lot in common. However, relations between the two greatly soured when Ferdinand expressed his intentions to convert his eldest son Crown Prince Boris (later Tsar Boris III) to Orthodoxy, the majority religion of Bulgaria. Leo strongly condemned the action, and when Ferdinand went through with the conversion anyway, Leo excommunicated him.

In 1889, Pope Leo XIII authorized the founding of The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, and granted it Papal degrees in theology

The United States frequently attracted his attention and admiration. He confirmed the decrees of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (1884) and raised James Gibbons, the archbishop of that city, to the cardinalate in 1886.

On 10 April 1887, a pontifical charter from Pope Leo XIII founded The Catholic University of America, establishing the national university of the Catholic Church in the United States.

American newspapers criticized Pope Leo because they claimed that he was attempting to gain control of American public schools. One cartoonist drew Leo as a fox unable to reach grapes that were labeled for American schools; the caption read "Sour grapes!"[37]

Pope Leo XIII is also remembered for the First Plenary Council of Latin America held at Rome in 1899, and for his encyclical of 1888 to the bishops of Brazil, In plurimis, on the abolition of slavery. In 1897 he published the Apostolic Letter Trans Oceanum, which dealt with the privileges and ecclesiastical structure of the Catholic Church in Latin America.[38]

His role in South America will also be remembered, especially the pontifical benediction extended over Chilean troops on the eve of the Battle of Chorrillos during the War of the Pacific in January 1881. The Chilean soldiers thus blessed then looted the cities of Chorrillos and Barranco, including the churches, and their Chaplains headed the robbery at the Biblioteca Nacional del Perú, where the soldiers ransacked various items along with much capital, and Chilean Priests coveted rare and ancient editions of the Bible that were stored there.[39] Despite this, one year later Chilean President Domingo Santa Marìa issued the Laic Laws, which separated the Church from the State, considered a slap in the face for the papacy.

Pope Leo XIII urged "Filii tui India, administri tibi salutis" (Your own sons, O India, will be the heralds of your salvation)[40] and founded the national seminary, called Papal Seminary. He entrusted this task to the then Apostolic Delegate to India Ladislaus Michael Zaleski, who founded the Seminary in 1893.

Pope Leo XIII sanctioned the missions to Eastern Africa beginning in 1884.[35] In 1879 Catholic missionaries associated with the White Father Congregation (Society of the Missionaries of Africa) came to Uganda and others went to Tanganyika (present day Tanzania) and Rwanda. In 1887, he approved the foundation of Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo, which were organized by the Bishop of Piacenza, Giovanni Battista Scalabrini. The missionaries were sent to North and South America to do pastoral care for Italian immigrants.

Giuseppe Pecci in 1872. At the urgent requests of the College of Cardinals, Leo XIII in 1879 elevated his brother, Giuseppe Pecci, a Jesuit and prominent Thomist theologian, into their ranks.[41]

The pontificate of Leo XIII was theologically influenced by the First Vatican Council (1869–1870), which had ended only eight years earlier. Leo XIII issued some 46 apostolic letters and encyclicals dealing with central issues in the areas of marriage and family and state and society. He also wrote two prayers for the intercession of Michael the Archangel after he allegedly had a vision of Michael and the end times,[42] but the story of the alleged vision may be merely apocryphal, as historians note that the story does not appear in any of his writings.[43]

Leo XIII also approved a number of Scapulars. In 1885, he approved the Scapular of the Holy Face, (also known as The Veronica) and elevated the Priests of the Holy Face to an archconfraternity.[44] He also approved the Scapular of Our Lady of Good Counsel and the Scapular of St. Joseph, both in 1893, and the Scapular of the Sacred Heart in 1900.[45]

As pope, he used all his authority for a revival of Thomism, the theology of Thomas Aquinas. On 4 August 1879, Leo XIII promulgated the encyclical Aeterni Patris ("Eternal Father"), which, more than any other single document, provided a charter for the revival of Thomism, the medieval theological system based on the thought of Aquinas – as the official philosophical and theological system of the Catholic Church. It was to be normative not only in the training of priests at church seminaries but also in the education of the laity at universities.

Pope Leo XIII then created the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas on 15 October 1879 and ordered the publication of the critical edition, the so-called Leonine Edition, of the complete works of the doctor angelicus. The superintendence of the leonine edition was entrusted to Tommaso Maria Zigliara, professor and rector of the Collegium Divi Thomae de Urbe, the future Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum. Leo XIII also founded the Angelicum's Faculty of Philosophy in 1882 and its Faculty of Canon Law in 1896.

The Blessed Sister Mary of the Divine Heart was a religious sister from the Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd who requested Pope Leo XIII to consecrate the entire world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.[46]

Pope Leo XIII performed a number of consecrations, at times entering new theological territory. After he had received many letters from Sister Mary of the Divine Heart, the countess of Droste zu Vischering and Mother Superior in the Convent of the Good Shepherd Sisters in Porto, Portugal, asking him to consecrate the entire world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, he commissioned a group of theologians to examine the petition on the basis of revelation and sacred tradition. The outcome of this investigation was positive and so in the encyclical letter Annum sacrum (on 25 May 1899), he decreed that the consecration of the entire human race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus should take place on 11 June 1899.

The encyclical letter also encouraged the entire Catholic episcopate to promote the First Friday Devotions, established June as the Month of the Sacred Heart, and included the Prayer of Consecration to the Sacred Heart.[47] His consecration of the entire world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus presented theological challenges in consecrating non-Christians. Since about 1850, various congregations and countries had consecrated themselves to the Sacred Heart, and, in 1875, the consecration was made throughout the Catholic world.

In his 1893 encyclical Providentissimus Deus, he described the importance of scriptures for theological study. It was an important encyclical for Catholic theology and its relation to the Bible, as Pope Pius XII pointed out 50 years later in his encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu.[48]

Pope Leo XIII fostered relations of goodwill, particularly towards the churches of the East not in communion with the Apostolic See. He also opposed efforts to Latinize the Eastern Rite Churches and stated that they constitute a most valuable ancient tradition and symbol of the divine unity of the Catholic Church. He expressed that in his encyclical "Orientalium Dignitas" of 1894 and wrote, "The Churches of the East are worthy of the glory and reverence that they hold throughout the whole of Christendom in virtue of those extremely ancient, singular memorials that they have bequeathed to us."

John Henry Newman was raised into the College of Cardinals by Pope Leo XIII.

Leo XIII is credited with great efforts in the areas of scientific and historical analysis. He opened the Vatican Archives and personally fostered a 20-volume comprehensive scientific study of the Papacy by Ludwig von Pastor, an Austrian historian.[49]

His predecessor, Pope Pius IX, became known as the Pope of the Immaculate Conception because of his dogmatization in 1854. Leo XIII, in light of his unprecedented promulgation of the rosary in 11 encyclicals, was called the Rosary Pope because he promulgated Marian devotion. In his encyclical on the 50th anniversary of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, he stresses Mary's role in the redemption of humanity and calls her Mediatrix and Co-Redemptrix. While allowing the title "Mediatrix", recent popes, following on the Second Vatican Council, have warned away from the term "co-redemptrix" as derogating from the one mediator, Jesus Christ.[50][51][52]

Leo XIII worked to encourage understanding between the Church and the modern world, but he preferred a cautious view on freedom of thought, stating that it "is quite unlawful to demand, defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, or speech, of writing or worship, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man." Leo's social teachings are based on the Catholic premise that God is the Creator of the world and its Ruler. Eternal law commands the natural order to be maintained, and forbids that it be disturbed; men's destiny is far above human things and beyond the earth.

Charles M. Johnson, Pope Leo XIII, 1899, National Gallery of Art

Portrait by Philip de László, 1900

His encyclicals changed the Church's relations with temporal authorities; the 1891 encyclical Rerum novarum, for the first time, addressed social inequality and social justice issues with papal authority by focusing on the rights and duties of capital and labour. He was greatly influenced by Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, a German bishop who openly propagated siding with the suffering working classes in his book Die Arbeiterfrage und das Christentum. Since Leo XIII, papal teachings have expanded on the rights and obligations of workers and the limitations of private property: Pope Pius XI's Quadragesimo anno, the social teachings of Pope Pius XII on a huge range of social issues, John XXIII's Mater et magistra in 1961, Pope Paul VI's Populorum progressio on world development issues, Pope John Paul II's Centesimus annus, commemorating the 100th anniversary of Rerum novarum, and Pope Francis' Laudato si' on the use of the goods of creation.

Leo had argued that both capitalism and communism are flawed. Rerum novarum introduced the idea of subsidiarity, the principle that political and social decisions should be taken at a local level, if possible, rather than by a central authority, into Catholic social thought. (See list of Encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII.)

Leo XIII canonized the following saints during his pontificate:

• 8 December 1881: Clare of Montefalco (d. 1308), John Baptist de Rossi (1696–1764), Lawrence of Brindisi (d. 1619), and Benedict Joseph Labre (1748–1783)
• 15 January 1888: Seven Holy Founders of the Servite Order, Peter Claver (1581–1654), John Berchmans (1599–1621), and Alphonsus Rodriguez (1531–1617)
• 27 May 1897: Antonio Maria Zaccaria (1502–1539) and Peter Fourier (1565–1640)
• 24 May 1900: John Baptist de la Salle (1651–1719) and Rita of Cascia (1381–1457)

Leo XIII beatified several of his predecessors: Urban II (14 July 1881), Victor III (23 July 1887) and Innocent V (9 March 1898). He canonized Adrian III on 2 June 1891.

He also beatified the following:

• Giancarlo Melchiori on 22 January 1882
• Edmund Campion and Ralph Sherwin in 1886
• John Haile on 29 December 1886
• John Baptist de la Salle (whom he later canonized) on 19 February 1888
• Inés of Benigánim on 26 February 1888
• Antonio Maria Zaccaria (whom he later canonized) on 3 January 1890
• Giovanni Giovenale Ancina on 9 February 1890
• Pompilio Maria Pirrotti on 26 January 1890
• Gerard Majella on 29 January 1893
• Leopoldo Croci on 12 May 1893
• Antonio Baldinucci on 16 April 1893
• Rodolfo Acquaviva and 4 Companions on 30 April 1893
• Diego José López-Caamaño on 22 April 1894
• Bernardino Realino on 12 January 1896
• François-Régis Clet on 27 May 1900
• Ignatius Delgado y Cebrian as one of 64 Martyrs of Vietnam on 27 May 1900
• Louis Gabriel Taurin Dufresse on 27 May 1900
• John Lantrua of Triora on 27 May 1900
• Maria Maddalena Martinengo on 3 June 1900
• Dénis Berthelot of the Nativity and Redento Rodríguez of the Cross on 10 June 1900
• Jeanne de Lestonnac on 23 September 1900
• Antonio Grassi on 30 September 1900

He approved the cult of Cosmas of Aphrodisia. He beatified several of the English martyrs in 1895.[53]

Leo XIII named four individuals as Doctors of the Church:

• Cyril of Alexandria (1883)
• Cyril of Jerusalem (1883)
• John of Damascus (1890)
• Bede the Venerable (13 November 1899)

In 1901, Pope Leo XIII welcomed Eugenio Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII, on his first day of 57 years of service in the Vatican (1901–1958).

One of the first audiences that Leo XIII granted was to the professors and students of the Collegio Capranica, where in the first row knelt in front of him the young seminarian Giacomo Della Chiesa, the future Pope Benedict XV, who would reign from 1914 to 1922.

On a pilgrimage with her father and sister in 1887, the future Saint Thérèse of Lisieux attended a general audience with Pope Leo XIII and asked him to allow her to enter the Carmelite order. Even though she was strictly forbidden to speak to him because she was told that it would prolong the audience too much, she wrote in her autobiography, Story of a Soul, that after she kissed his slipper and he presented his hand, instead of kissing it, she took it in her own hand and said through tears, "Most Holy Father, I have a great favor to ask you. In honor of your Jubilee, permit me to enter Carmel at the age of 15!" Leo XIII answered, "Well, my child, do what the superiors decide." Thérèse replied, "Oh! Holy Father, if you say yes, everybody will agree!" Finally, the Pope said, "Go... go... You will enter if God wills it" [italics hers]. Two guards lifted her (still on her knees in front of the Pope) by her arms and carried her to the door, where a third gave her a medal of the Pope. Shortly thereafter, the Bishop of Bayeux authorized the prioress to receive Thérèse, and in April 1888, she entered Carmel at the age of 15.

• Chadwick, Owen. A History of the Popes 1830–1914 (2003). online pp 273–331.
• Chadwick, Owen. The Popes and European Revolution (1981) 655pp excerpt; also online
• Duffy, Eamon (1997), Saints and Sinners, A History of the Popes, Yale University Press.
• Thérèse of Lisieux (1996), Story of a Soul — The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Clarke, John Clarke trans (3rd ed.), Washington, DC: ICS.
• Quardt, Robert, The Master Diplomat; From the Life of Leo XIII, Wolson, Ilya trans, New York: Alba House.
• O'Reilly, Bernard (1887), Life of Leo XIII — From An Authentic Memoir — Furnished By His Order, New York: Charles L Webster & Co.

• Bäumer, Remigius (1992), Marienlexikon [Dictionary of Mary] (in German), et al, St Ottilien, Eos.
• Franzen, August; Bäumer, Remigius (1988), Papstgeschichte (in German), Freiburg: Herder.
• Kühne, Benno (1880), Papst Leo XIII [Pope Leo XIII] (in German), New York & St. Louis: C&N Benzinger, Einsideln.
• Quardt, Robert (1964), Der Meisterdiplomat [The Master Diplomat] (in German), Kevelaer, DE: Butzon & Bercker
• Schmidlin, Josef (1934), Papstgeschichte der neueren Zeit (in German), München.

• Regoli, Roberto (2009). "L'elite cardinalizia dopo la fine dello stato pontificio". Archivum Historiae Pontificiae. 47: 63–87. JSTOR 23565185.