Editing Pope Leo XII (section)

===Foreign policy===
Pius VII's [[Cardinal Secretary of State]], [[Ercole Consalvi]], who had been della Genga's rival in the conclave, was immediately dismissed, and Pius' policies rejected.<ref>Francis A. Burkle-Young, ''Papal Elections in the Age of Transition, 1878–1922'', 2000:22ff.</ref> Leo XII's foreign policy, entrusted at first to the octogenarian [[Giulio Maria della Somaglia]] and then to the more able [[Tommaso Bernetti]], negotiated certain [[concordat]]s very advantageous to the papacy. Personally most frugal, Leo XII reduced taxes, made justice less costly, and was able to find money for certain public improvements, yet he left the Church's finances more confused than he had found them, and even the elaborate [[jubilee (Christian)|jubilee]] of 1825 did not really mend financial matters.<ref name=EB1911/>

With regard to the [[Spanish American wars of independence|Spanish American Wars of Independence]], he initially displayed a cautious stance of neutrality between the [[Spanish Empire]] and the Spanish American Republics, not recognizing them diplomatically, but allowing the priestly Ordination of clergy sympathetic to the independence movements, seeking to avoid explicit declarations against the independentists for fear of [[Anti-clericalism|anti-clerical]] policies by the [[Libertadores|Liberadores]] in response, as well as an abuse of the [[patronato real]] in [[Spain]] to pressure the [[Pope]] to increase his hostility. But after receiving representatives of the Spanish Court (supported in turn by the [[Holy Alliance]]) and also envoys from [[Gran Colombia]] proposing a [[Concordat]], he issued opinions against the latter in order to ''restore tranquility and order to his subjects in those domains'', influencing the rejection of the [[Holy See]] to the patriotic Armies that they affirm [[Liberalism|liberal]] ideologies and the [[Modernism in the Catholic Church|Modernist errors]] of the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] (perceived by the Church as heresies) contrary to [[natural law]] and the [[Thomism|Thomistic]] Conception of Politics (citing as an example its application in the [[Dechristianization of France during the French Revolution|Dechristianization of France]] during the [[French Revolution]]), as well as considering that the cause of the socio-political disorder in Latin America came from the insurgents with their rebellions against the Legitimate authority and seeking to force the practice of the voluntaristic doctrines of the Social Contract, a work condemned in the Index librorum prohibitorum, which prevented a pacification of the continent in a situation of anarchy since the [[Napoleonic invasion of Iberia|Napoleonic invasion]] (This criticism, despite popular rumors, was not influenced by papal sympathies for the traditional Monarchy or any pressure from the [[Congress of Verona]]). It was thus that he proclaimed the encyclical [[Etsi Liam Diu]], in continuity with the previous pro-[[Royalist (Spanish American independence)|royalist]] encyclical, [[Etsi longissimo terrarum]], in which he exhorted the Hispanic American clergy ''"to advise and insist among the faithful to obedience and submission to the legitimate sovereign and mother country,"'' that is, to maintain the Pact with the [[Hispanic Monarchy (political entity)|Hispanic Monarchy]] intact by inspiring the common population to be faithful vassals and to abjure the "new ideas" of the Hispanic American Enlightenment and its [[Secularism]] (especially the threat that nation-states would claim to be the new socio-political rector of the destinies of society, to the detriment of the spiritual supremacy of the Church according to [[Doctrine of the two swords|political Augustinianism]]), as well as to achieve a Reconciliation between Hispanic Americans involved in a fratricidal civil war that threatened to fragment the political ties of [[Hispanidad|Hispanicity]]. However, due to logistical problems, the document was not delivered to the Spanish Americans until after the [[Battle of Ayacucho]] (the wars of independence having already ended in royalist defeat) and the [[Creole nationalism|Creole and liberal elites]], once they learned of its existence, took the opportunity to accuse the document of being a Spanish forgery (a historiographical controversy that would be resolved with the release of the [[Vatican Apostolic Archive|Vatican Archives]] by [[Pope Leo XIII|Leo XIII]] at the end of the century, revealing the original copy).<ref>{{cite journal|access-date=2025-05-13 |last=Delgado |date=1961-02-17 |first=Luis Martínez |issn=2590-6275 |language=es |number=02 |pages=99–104 |periodical=Boletín Cultural y Bibliográfico |title=Apuntes sobre la encíclica del Pontífice León XII relativa a la independencia de las colonias americanas |url=https://publicaciones.banrepcultural.org/index.php/boletin_cultural/article/view/6309/6522 |volume=4}}<!-- auto-translated from Spanish by Module:CS1 translator --></ref><ref>{{cite journal|access-date=2025-05-13 |last=S |date=1990-12-14 |doi=10.22201/iih.24485004e.1990.013.68869 |first=Héctor C. Hernández |issn=2448-5004 |language=es |number=13 |periodical=Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea de México |title=México y la encíclica Etsi iam diu de León XII |url=https://moderna.historicas.unam.mx/index.php/ehm/article/view/68869/68876 |volume=13|doi-access=free }}<!-- auto-translated from Spanish by Module:CS1 translator --></ref><ref>{{cite web|access-date=2025-05-13 |title=La Desconocida Enciclica del Vaticano contra las Independencias Américanas – Hispanismo Chile |url=https://hispanismo.cl/2024/07/17/la-desconocida-enciclica-del-vaticano-contra-las-independencias-americanas/ |website=hispanismo.cl}}<!-- auto-translated from Spanish by Module:CS1 translator --></ref>

[[Image:Schedrin NewRome.jpg|thumb|left|The Tiber with [[Castel Sant'Angelo]], [[Ponte Sant'Angelo]] and St. Peter in the time of Leo XII, by [[Sylvester Shchedrin|Silvestr Feodosievich Shchedrin]]]]