Pope Leo XIII

Pope Leo XIII, elected at sixty-eight and expected to be a caretaker, reigned for twenty-five years and turned the papacy toward the modern world. Aeterni Patris of 1879 made the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas the standard for Catholic schools and began the Thomist revival that runs through Maritain and Thomas Aquinas College. Rerum Novarum of 1891, on the condition of the working classes, defended private property against socialism and workers against unrestrained capitalism, and founded Catholic social teaching. He opened the Vatican archives to historians and wrote Latin verse into his nineties.