Editing Pope Leo XIII (section)

====Italy====

[[File:Vatican Observatory 1891.jpg|thumb|right|Silver medal celebrating Pope Leo XIII's 1891 inauguration of the new observatory]]

In the light of a climate hostile to the Catholic Church, Leo continued the policies of Pius IX towards [[Kingdom of Italy|Italy]] without major modifications.{{Sfn|Schmidlin|1934|p=409}} In his relations with the Italian state, Leo continued the Papacy's self-imposed [[prisoner in the Vatican|incarceration-in-the-Vatican]] stance and continued to insist that Italian Catholics should not vote in Italian elections or hold any elected office. In his first [[papal consistory|consistory]] in 1879, he elevated his older brother, [[Giuseppe Pecci|Giuseppe]], to the cardinalate. He had to defend the freedom of the church against what Catholics considered Italian persecution and discrimination in the area of education, expropriation and violation of Catholic Churches, legal measures against the church and acts of terrorism such as anticlerical groups attempting to throw the corpse of Pope Pius IX into the [[Tiber]] on 13 July 1881.{{Sfn|Schmidlin|1934|p=413}} The pope even considered moving his residence to [[Trieste]] or [[Salzburg]], two cities in [[Cisleithania|Austria]], an idea that Emperor [[Franz Joseph I of Austria|Franz Joseph I]] gently rejected.{{Sfn|Schmidlin|1934|p=414}}