Papal conclave, 1903

The Papal conclave of 1903 was caused by the death of the 93 year old Pope Leo XIII, who at that stage was the third longest reigning pope in history. (Pope John Paul II (1978-2005) passed Leo into third place a century later.) 
It saw the election of Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto as Pope Pius X.
==Background==
framed|right|Pope Pius X (1903-1914), the victor in the 1903 conclave, wearing the 1834 Papal Tiara of Pope Gregory XVI.
In 1903 the twenty-five year pontificate of the liberal diplomat Pope Leo XIII came to an end. For fifty-six years the papacy had been led by just two men, Leo and his predecessor, Pius IX. While Pius had been a conservative reactionary, Leo had been seen as a liberal, certainly by the standards of his predecessor. As cardinals gathered, the key question was whether a pope would be chosen who would continue Leo's policies or return to the style of papacy of Pius IX.
==Favoured candidate vetoed by Francis Joseph of Austria==
When the cardinals assembled in the Sistine Chapel attention focused on Count Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro, Leo's Cardinal Secretary of State. Rampolla was seen as the leading papabile (a cardinal thought likely to be elected pope). As expected, Rampolla was close to being elected, but was then vetoed in the name of Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria by Jan Maurycy Pawel Puzyna de Kosielsko, the Prince-Bishop of Kraków in Austria-Hungary, the Austrian Cardinal would not impose the Veto and Franz Joseph had to ask the Pole. The veto was pronounced to the disgust of the other cardinals. The reason for the veto was never established but could be due to Rampolla's support of the French Third Republic while he was Secretary of State.
Three leading Catholic heads of state claimed the power of veto: the King of France, the King of Spain, and the Holy Roman Emperor (the Emperor of Austria after the abolition of the Holy Roman Empire). This was rarely exercised; no candidate against whom the veto was claimed had ever been elected Pope, though in 1846 an attempted veto failed when the cardinal whom the Austrian Emperor had entrusted to issue the veto arrived too late, finding the conclave over and the man he was meant to veto publicly announced as pope.
==Patriarch of Venice elected==
The blocking of Rampolla, the popular press speculated, threw the conclave wide open. The eventual victor, Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, Patriarch of Venice, was a working-class populist conservative, closer in attitude to the papacy of Pius IX than Leo XIII. It was reported after the conclave that a rumour alleged to have been revealed by a conclave participant had it that in the last ballot, Cardinal Sarto received 55 of the 60 possible votes. The new pope took the name Pius X.
==Veto abolished==
Pius X on his election took two decisions. He formally abolished the veto of heads of state, declaring that anyone who dared introduce a civil veto in the conclave would suffer automatic excommunication (future conclave participants were required to swear an oath not to transmit a veto by a secular monarch to the conclave), and declined to reappoint Rampolla as Secretary of State. Like his predecessors, Pope Pius X disputed the Kingdom of Italy's right to own Rome. He gave his Urbi et Orbi on a balcony facing into St. Peter's Basilica rather than to the crowds outside to symbolise his opposition to Italian rule of Rome and his demand for a return of the States of the Church.
==Conclave factfile==
* Dates of conclave: July 31 - August 4 1903
* Location: Sistine Chapel in the Vatican Palace
* Arrived late: none, but Patrick Francis Moran, Archbishop of Sydney in Australia did not travel as he would not have made it to Rome in time for the conclave. 
* Unavailable through ill-health: 
**Michelangelo Celesia, O.S.B., Archbishop of Palermo (Italy) 
* Present included: 
**Antonio Agliardi, Cardinal-Bishop of Albano (Italy)
**Andrea Aiuti, titular Archbishop of Tamiathis, Apostolic Nuncio to Portugal (Italy)
**Bartolomeo Bacilieri, Bishop of Verona (Italy)
**Giulio Boschi, Archbishop of Ferrara (Italy)
**Alfonso Capecelatro di Castelpagano, C.O., Archbishop of Capua (Italy)
**Giovanni Battista Casali del Drago (Italy)
**Salvador Casañas y Pagés, Bishop of Barcelona (Spain)
**Francesco di Paola Cassetta, titular Patriarch of Nicomedia (Italy)
**Felice Cavagnis, Pro-Secretary of the Roman Curia (Italy)
**Beniamino Cavvicchioni, titular Archbishop of Nazianzus, Secretary of Council to the Roman Curia (Italy)
**Pierre-Hector Coullié, Archbishop of Lyon (France)
**Serafino Cretoni, titular Latin Archbishop of Damascus, Prefect of Rites (Italy)
**Francesco Salesio Della Volpe, Prefect of the Apostolic Chamber (Italy)
**Angelo Di Pietro, titular Archbishop of Nazianzus (Italy)
**Andrea Carlo Ferrari, Archbishop of Milan (Italy)
**Domenico Ferrata, titular Archbishop of Thessalonica (Italy)
**Anton Hubert Fischer, Archbishop of Cologne (Germany)
**Giuseppe Francica-Nava di Bontifé, Archbishop of Catania (Italy)
**Casimiro Gennari, titular Archbishop of Naupactus (Italy)
**James Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore (United States of America)
**Pierre-Lambert Goosens, Archbishop of Mechelen (Belgium)
**Girolamo Maria Gotti, O.C.D., titular Archbishop of Petra in Aegypto, Prefect of Propagation of the Faith (Italy)
**Anton Joseph Gruscha, Archbishop of Vienna (Austria-Hungary)
**Sebastián Herrero Espinosa de los Monteros, Archbishop of Valencia (Spain)
**Johannes Katschthaler, Archbishop of Salzburg (Austria-Hungary)
**Georg von Kopp, Archbishop of Breslau (Germany)
**Joseph-Guillaume Labouré, Archbishop of Rennes (France)
**Benoit-Marie Langénieux, Archbishop of Reims (France)
**Victor-Lucien-Sulpice Lécot, Archbishop of Bordeaux (France)
**Michael Logue, Archbishop of Armagh (United Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland)
**Luigi Macchi (Italy)
**Achille Manara, Bishop of Ancona and Numana (Italy)
**José María Martín de Herrera y de la Iglesia, Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela (Spain)
**Sebastiano Martinelli, O.S.A., titular Archbishop of Ephesus, curial official (Italy)
**François-Désiré Mathieu, Archbishop Emeritus of Toulouse (France)
**Mario Mocenni, Cardinal-Bishop of Sabina (Italy)
**José Sebastião de Almeida Neto, O.F.M., Patriarch of Lisbon (Portugal)
**Carlo Nocella, titular Latin Patriarch of Constantinople (Italy)
**Adolphe Perraud, Bishop of Autun (France)
**Raffaele Pierotti, O.P. (Italy)
**Gennaro Portanova, Archbishop of Reggio Calabria (Italy)
**Giuseppe Prisco, Archbishop of Naples (Italy)
**Jan Maurycy Pawel Puzyna de Kosielsko, Prince-Bishop of Kraków (Austria-Hungary)
**Mariano Rampolla, Cardinal Secretary of State (Italy)
**Pietro Respighi, Archbishop Emeritus of Ferrara (Italy)
**Agostino Gaetano Riboldi, Archbishop of Ravenna (Italy)
**François-Marie-Benjamin Richard de la Vergne, Archbishop of Paris (France)
**Agostino Richelmy, Archbishop of Turin (Italy)
**Ciriaco María Cardinal Sancha y Hervás, Archbishop of Toledo (Spain)
**Alessandro Sanminiatelli Zabarella, titular Patriarch of Tyana (Italy)
**Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, Patriarch of Venice (Italy)
**Francesco Satolli, Cardinal-Bishop of Frascati, Prefect of Studies (Italy)
**Francesco Segnal (Italy)
**Lev Skrbenský z Hříště, Archbishop of Prague (Austria-Hungary)
**Luigi Oreglia di Santo Stefano. Dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals (Italy)
**Andreas Steinhuber, S.J. (Germany)
**Domenico Svampa, Archbishop of Bologna (Italy)
**Emidio Taliani, titular Archbishop of Sebastea, Apostolic Nuncio to Austria-Hungary (Italy)
**Luigi Tripepi, Prefect of Rites (Italy)
**Serafino Vannutelli, Cardinal-Bishop of Porto-Santa Rufina, Prefect of Ceremonies (Italy)
**Vincenzo Vannutelli, Cardinal-Bishop of Palestrina (Italy)
**Kolos Ferenc Vaszary, Archbishop of Esztergom (Austria-Hungary)
**José Calassanç Vives y Tuto, O.F.M. Cap. (Spain)
* Cardinals by country (participating):
**Unified Kingdom of Italy - 38
**French Republic - 7
**Austro-Hungarian Empire - 5
**Kingdom of Spain - 5
**German Empire - 3
**Kingdom of Belgium - 1
**United Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland - 1
**Kingdom of Portugal - 1
**United States of America - 1
**Total - 62
PAPAL CONCLAVE, 1903
Duration 	4 days
Number of ballots	7
Electors 	64
Absent 	2
Present 	62
Africa 	0
Latin America 	0
North America 	1
Asia 	0
Europe 	61
Oceania 	0
Mid-East 	0
Italians 	36
Veto used 	by Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria
DECEASED POPE 	LEO XIII (1878-1903)
NEW POPE 	PIUS X (1903-1914)
*Reference:Francis A. Burkle-Young, Papal Elections in the Age of Transition 1878-1922 published 2000 by Rowman & Littlefield, ISBN 0-7391-0114-5
Category:1903 elections
1903
Category:20th-century Roman Catholicism
fr:Conclave de 1903
it:Conclave del 1903
nl:Conclaaf van 1903
no:Konklavet 1903
pl:Konklawe 1903
pt:Conclave de 1903
ru:Конклав 1903 года
fi:Vuoden 1903 konklaavi