Leo XIII

Pope Leo XIII was not an Augustinian, but knew and appreciated the Order from his days in the town of his birth.

 

Born as Gioacchino Pecci in 1810 at Carpineto, Italy, where there was an Augustinian church and house (convento).

 

Ordained a priest in 1837, he moved in 1841 to Perugia, where as a priest he started a bank for poor people, and introduced other reforms.

 

In 1843 he went as papal nuncio to Belgium, and when recalled in 1845 he was made bishop of Perugia.

 

Pecci governed his diocese in such a manner as to point ahead to his later career as pope.

 

Pope Pius IX made him a cardinal in 1853. In an address as the Cardinal Archishop of Perugia on 21 July 1860, he spoke highly of the Augustinians who were labouring there.

 

He became pope on 20th February 1878. In his fondness for the Augustinians, he rebuilt their ancient church and convento in his native town, Carpineto, and gave it an annual donation of money. In 1888 it was made the novitiate for the Roman Province and for adjacent Italian provinces.

 

Pope Leo had already assisted the Order by stepping into it governance in 1880 to have the forward-looking and dynamic Anthony Pacifico Neno O.S.A. called from the position of Augustinian Provincial of Villanova Province (United States of America) to govern the Order internationally.

 

The assistance of Leo XIII was so invaluable that the suggestion has been made, "The Pope in the year 1256 helped the birth of the Order, and Leo XIII helped save it from dying." This suggestion is not totally without merit.

 

He also showed his interest by approving the acquisition and use of land immediately adjacent to Saint Peter's Square as the site for a new Augustinian General Curia and Augustinian international house of studies (Saint Monica's International College).

 

Leo also appointed three gifted Augustinians as cardinals, and previously had appointed one of them, Sebastian Martinelli O.S.A., as apostolic delegate to the United States from 1896 to 1902.

 

In March 1892 he gave the Order the parish of Castel Gandolfo, which contains the summer residence of the Pope.

 

(In 1929 Pope Pius XII took this parish from the Order, and instead gave it the Parish of Saint Anne - the Parish of Vatican City - instead.)

 

He also appointed some members of the Order as diocesan bishops in areas where Augustinians normally had no expectation of this appointment.

 

One of these Augustinians was a professor at Saint Monica's International College in Rome, Giovanni Camillieri O.S.A.. He became the Bishop of Gozo, Malta.

 

In his long pontificate of twenty five years, Leo officially declared only seventeen persons to be saints of the Church, yet two of these were Augustinians, Clare of Montefalco and Rita of Cascia.

 

He died on 20th July 1903.