Picture of Pope Leo XIII (1903) - Vintage Catholic Stock Photo

Pope Leo XIII (born Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci) was the head of the Catholic Church from 1878 to 1903^[1]. He decreed that a prayer to St. Michael be said at the end of "low" Masses, along with the Salve Regina^[2]. He was born in Carpineto and was the sixth of seven sons of Count Lodovico Pecci and his wife Anna Prosperi-Buzi^[3]. As Pope, he used his authority to revive Thomism, a theology based on Thomas Aquinas' thought^[4], and issued an encyclical Aeterni Patris which laid the cornerstone for a great social edifice he was about to construct in his following encyclicals^[5].