From 1878 to 1903 - 01 |
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After a turbulent papacy of thirty-two years, Pope Pius IX died on 2nd February 1878, at which time the Augustinian Order seemed headed for extinction. With the pontificate of the new Pope Leo XIII, however, a new chapter was about to be written in the history of the Order.
Right from the very first years of his pontificate, Pope Leo XIII exerted special efforts towards defining and strengthening the status of Religious Orders.
Images (below): At right, Pope Leo XIII, and (at left) part of his home town, where he renovated St Augustine’s Church and returned it to the care of the Augustinians.
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As a result of this, In 1881 he was able to issue the apostolic constitution Romanos pontifices, which governed the relationship between the hierarchy (bishops) and the regular (i.e., Religious) clergy.
He realised that the Church would remain weak as long as its Religious Orders were weak, and thus set about doing what was within his power to nurture them so that they might flourish once more.
This web site will focus on Leo’s interest in and assistance to the Augustinians, although other religious orders and societies such as the Franciscans and Jesuits could write similar pages about his positive assistance in their regard also. (Leo made his brother, a Jesuit named Giuseppe Pecci, a cardinal in 1897.)
When previously he was the Cardinal Archbishop of Perugia from 1846 to 1877, Leo XIII came to know very well the struggling condition of the Religious Orders in Italy. For example, he was aware that the Augustinians had been routed from their church and convent in his native town of Carpineto a few years before his birth, and had had been unsuccessful in returning there. Carpineto Romano is a comune (municipality) in the Province of Rome in the Italian region of Lazio, located in hills about 60 kms southeast of Rome.
And while at Perugia Leo (then Cardinal Gioacchino Pecci) had become even more acquainted with the Order because one of his closest friends was Fr Luigi Sepiacci O.S.A., and because the scholarship and the exemplary life of the Augustinian community in the city of Perugia edified him.
Even before promulgating Romanos pontifices, his Constitution for Religious in 1881, Leo XIII had already initiated a long series of helpful measures for the Augustinian Order. By 1879 the situation of the Order was becoming desperate. In Italy, no novices were being received, the older friars were dying off, and many priories, with the religious still dispersed, were going to rack and ruin.
An Augustinian historian wrote, "It would be very nearly true to say that for a time the Order, as actually and juridically subject to the Prior General, existed only in the Papal States of Southern Italy and in Ireland. Now, however, with the loss of the Papal States, the security of the last refuge is gone."
(Continued on the next page.)
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