LEO XIII. (Gioacchino Pecci) (1810-19o3), pope from 1878 to 1903, reckoned the 257th successor of St. Peter, was born at Carpineto on March 2, 181o. His family was Sienese in origin, and his father, Colonel Domenico Pecci, had served under Napoleon. His mother, Anna Prosperi, is said to have been a descendant of Rienzi, and was a member of the third order of St. Francis. He and his elder brother Giuseppe (known as Car dinal Pecci) were educated by the Jesuits at Viterbo, and at Rome. In 1825 he headed a students' deputation to Pope Leo XII. After graduation as doctor of theology he entered the Accademia dei Nobili ecclesiastici. Two years later Gregory XVI. appointed him a domestic prelate. He was ordained priest on Dec. 31, 1837, and a few weeks later was made apostolic dele gate of Benevento. In 1841 he was appointed delegate of Perugia, at that time a centre of anti-papal secret societies. There he obtained a reputation as a social and municipal reformer. In he was sent as nuncio to Brussels, being first consecrated a bishop (Feb. 19). During his three years' residence at Brussels he was occupied with the education controversy then raging, and he mediated between the Jesuits and the Catholic university of Louvain. In January 1846 he was appointed bishop of Perugia with the rank of archbishop ; but before returning to Italy he spent February in London, and March and April in Paris. On Dec. 19, 1853, he received the red hat from Pius IX. Meanwhile, and throughout his long episcopate of thirty-two years, he built and restored many churches, striving to elevate the intellectual as well as the spiritual tone of his clergy, and showing in his pastoral letters an unusual regard for learning and for social reform.
His position in Italy was similar to that of Bishop Dupanloup in France; and, as but a moderate supporter of the policy enunciated in the Syllabus, he was not altogether persona grata to Pius IX. He protested against the loss of the pope's temporal power in 187o, against the confiscation of the property of the religious orders, and against the law of civil marriage established by the Italian government, and he refused to welcome Victor Emmanuel in his diocese. In 1877, when the papal office of
camerlengo became vacant, Pius IX. appointed to it Cardinal Pecci, who thus returned to reside in Rome.
When Pius IX. died (Feb. 7, 1878) Cardinal Pecci was elected pope at the subsequent conclave with comparative unanimity, ob taining at the third scrutiny (Feb. 20) forty-four out of sixty-one votes, or more than the requisite two-thirds majority. Although his long seclusion at Perugia had caused his name to be little known outside Italy, there was a general belief that the conclave had selected a man who was a prudent statesman as well as a devout churchman.
The second day after his election Pope Leo XIII. crossed the Tiber incognito to his former residence in the Falconieri Palace to collect his papers, returning at once to the Vatican, where he continued to regard himself as "imprisoned" so long as the Italian government occupied the city of Rome. He was crowned in the Sistine Chapel on March 3, 1878, and at once began a reform of the papal household on austere and economic lines. He sum moned to the Vatican certain Perugian clergy who had been trained under his own eye, and from the first he was less accessible than his predecessor had been, either in public or private audience. The stricter theological training of the Roman Catholic clergy throughout the world on the lines laid down by St. Thomas Aquinas was his first care, and to this end he founded in Rome and endowed an academy bearing the great schoolman's name, further devoting about £12,000 to the publication of a new and splendid edition of his works, the idea being that on this basis the later teaching of Catholic theologians and many of the specula tions of modern thinkers could best be harmonized and brought into line.