page_title: Pope Leo XIII
section_title: United States
hierarchical_section_title: Pope Leo XIII / Papacy, 1878–1903 / Foreign relations / United States
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Pope Leo XIII.
context_page_description: Pope Leo XIII was the head of the Roman Catholic Church from 20 February 1878 to his death in 1903. He was the oldest pope, and had the third-longest confirmed pontificate, behind those of Pius IX and John Paul II.
  He is well known for his intellectualism and his attempts to define the position of the Catholic Church with regard to modern thinking. In his famous 1891 encyclical Rerum novarum, Pope Leo outlined the rights of workers to a fair wage, safe working conditions, and the formation of trade unions, while affirming the rights of property and free enterprise, opposing both socialism and laissez-faire capitalism. He influenced Mariology of the Catholic Church and promoted both the rosary and the scapular.
  Leo XIII issued a record of eleven papal encyclicals on the rosary, earning him the title as the "Rosary Pope". In addition, he approved two new Marian scapulars and was the first pope to fully embrace the concept of Mary as Mediatrix. He was the first pope to have never held any control over the Papal States, after they had been dissolved by 1870.
context_section_description: The United States frequently attracted his attention and admiration. He confirmed the decrees of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (1884) and raised James Gibbons, the archbishop of that city, to the cardinalate in 1886.
  On 10 April 1887, a pontifical charter from Pope Leo XIII founded The Catholic University of America, establishing the national university of the Catholic Church in the United States.
  American newspapers criticized Pope Leo because they claimed that he was attempting to gain control of American public schools. One cartoonist drew Leo as a fox unable to reach grapes that were labeled for American schools; the caption read "Sour grapes!"
caption: In 1889, Pope Leo XIII authorized the founding of The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, and granted it Papal degrees in theology
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