Editing Pope Leo XII (section)

===Vaccination controversy===
[[File:Pope Leo XII.PNG|thumb|Portrait of Pope Leo XII.]]
According to some contemporary authors such as G. S. Godkin, Leo XII was also said to have prohibited [[vaccination]].<ref>Godkin, G. S. (1880). Life of Victor Emmanuel II. Macmillan</ref> More recent scholarship has been unable to find any ban or any suggestion of a ban by Leo XII and his administration. Donald J. Keefe<ref>Donald J. Keefe, "Tracking the footnote", [http://www.catholicscholars.org/PDFFiles/v9n4sep1986.pdf Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Newsletter, Volume 9, Number 4, September 1986] pp. 6–7.</ref> traced a quote by Leo XII which strongly condemned vaccination to "an unverified citation" by Dr. Pierre Simon in ''Histoire et philosophie du contrôle des naissances''. The response of the Papacy to the arrival of vaccination in Italy has been documented in ''Pratique de la vaccination antivariolique dans les provinces de l’État pontifical au 19ème siècle'', an article written by [[Yves-Marie Bercé]] and Jean-Claude Otteni for Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.rhe.eu.com/material/Pagesdeberce.pdf |title=Archived copy |access-date=3 February 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150203052417/http://www.rhe.eu.com/material/Pagesdeberce.pdf |archive-date=3 February 2015  }}</ref> According to Bercé and Otteni, the biographers and contemporaries of Leo XII do not mention any interdict. The authors credit the origin of the mythical vaccination ban of Leo XII to the personality of Cardinal della Genga when he became pope in 1823. His intransigence and piety alienated liberal opinion very quickly. His austere spirituality made him the target of criticisms and mocking remarks. English travelers visiting the peninsula and many of the diplomats established in Rome remarked on the severity of the pontiff.

The absence of a prohibition is evidenced by the fact that in 1828 the Medical-Surgical Society of Bologna was able to implement a vaccination campaign.<ref>{{Cite book|url=http://badigit.comune.bologna.it/books/sol/103243_INV.pdf|title=Risultamenti ottenuti dalla Società medico-chirurgica di Bologna per la inoculazione del vaccino praticata nell'anno 1828|last=Argelati|first=Giacomo|year=1829|location=Bologna|trans-title=Results obtained by the Medical-Surgical Society of Bologna on the inoculation of the vaccine}}</ref>