The stories from Nicholas Cardinal Wiseman’s Recollections of the Last Four Popes keep getting better and better. I’ve now come in my reading to Wiseman’s presentation of the career of Leo XII (1760-1829), the successor of Pius VII. I simply quote the anecdotes about Leo XII I enjoyed most, as they appear in the narrative, for your enjoyment:

The promises of the new reign were bright and springlike. If the Pope had not taken any part in public affairs, if his health had kept him even out of sight, during previous years, he now displayed an intelligence, and an activity, which bade fair to make his pontificate one of great celebrity. But he had scarcely entered on its duties, when all the ailments of his shattered constitution assailed him with increased fury, and threatened to cut short at once all his hopeful beginnings. . . .

All Rome attributed [the Pope's] unexpected recovery to the prayers of a saintly bishop, who was sent for, at the Pope’s request, from his distant See of Macerata. This was Monsignor Strambi, of the Congregation of the Passion. He came immediately, saw the Pope, assured him of his recovery, as he had offered up to Heaven his own valueless life in exchange for one so precious. It did indeed seem as if he had transfused his own vitality into the Pope’s languid frame. He himself died the next day, the 31st of December, and the Pontiff rose like one from the grave.

Those Passionists were no joke! One of the many smaller orders all but crushed by the loss of vocations after the Second Vatican Council. What a story, though; it reminds me of St. Gemma Galgani, who had a Passionist as her spiritual director, who took on great physical sufferings in order to save others from damnation.

One of the many reforms undertaken by Leo XII was a reorganization of the parishes in diocese of Rome. He cut the number from 71 to 43, with the aim of improving the finances of those in the poorer districts. Cardinal Wiseman then relates:

There was an anecdote current at Rome, when this new circumscription was going on. The Pope, in his plans, intended the Chiesa Nuova to be a parish church. This belongs to the Fathers of Oratory, founded, as all the world now knows, by St. Philip Neri. It was said that the superior of the house took, and showed to the Holy Father, an autographed memorial of the Saint to the Pope of his day, petitioning that his church should never be a parish. And below it was written that Pope’s promise, also in his own hand, that it never should. This Pope was St. Pius V. Leo bowed to such authorities, said that he could not contend against two saints, and altered his plans.

Ah, alas! if only St. Philip Neri had put his hand to Quo primum tempore besides!

Now the Chiesa Nuova is one of the great churches of the city of Rome, and especially dear to any of us who have connections to one of the wonderful English-speaking Oratories. While in Rome last summer, I made several visits there to venerate the body, on display under a side altar, of St. Philip Neri. If you’re in Rome, do go to this church and venerate this great saint, hidden even in death and sainthood, as he would have wanted, but whom his more attentive biographers called “the third Christ”, St. Francis of Assisi having been the second.

The photo to the right is one which I took at Chiesa Nuova, at St. Philip’s altar, last summer. At one point, an Oratorian Father had to ask me to come back away from the altar because I had gotten too close - I was desirous of studying his face closely.

Finally, one more fine story about Leo XII, though this one may be apocryphal. Cardinal Wiseman gives it after a couple others, the truth of which he personally knew, which illustrate how Leo XII liked to make surprise visits around the city of Rome during the daily siesta (makes me think of the sweltering heat we have right now), generally in order to render some charitable service.

A story used to be current, the truth of which cannot here be vouched for, of his driving, at the same unreasonable hour, to the church of a religious community of men, supposed to be not well kept. He was in it before the members of the house were roused, and knelt at the plain bench or genuflessorio, before the altar. He then entered the house, and conversed affably as usual. As he left, a delicate request was made for some memorial of his visit. He replied that he had left one where he had knelt. On going thither they found, written in the dust which covered the prie-dieu:

L E O X I I

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