Collegian-Independent Online

AVIGNON, Papal States, Nov7 - Pope Leo XIII was near death as dawn broke this morning, his breathing shallow and his heart and kidneys failing, the Vatican said. Hundreds of thousands of faithful from the French Empire and elsewhere paid homage, many weeping as they knelt with bowed heads, others carrying candles in prayer for the 93-year-old pontiff outside the Papal Palace at Avignon.

Born Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci to an Italian comital family, Leo XIII was the 256th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, reigning from (local) 1878 to 1903 in succession to Pope Pius IX. Reigning until the age of 93, he was the oldest pope, and had the second longest pontificate, behind his immediate predecessor Pius IX.

Pope Leo XIII is best known for his intellectualism, the development of social teachings with his encyclical Rerum Novarum and his attempts to define the position of the Church with regard to the severing.  His establishment of a Commission to rule on the Reunification, and refusal to embrace medieval doctrine in regard to non-humans estabished the Catholic Church as a relevant factor among the TL 4, 5, 6 Western Powers.  He called the ongoing Ecumencial Council to re-establish the line and doctrine of Peter following the severing.  

Following the Reunification, in which he forbid Vatican City to be considered for salvation, he moved the Papacy to the stabilised thread of Imperial France.  Through his nuncio the pope pointed out that Vatican City was a tiny thread holding only a few thousand souls, and art treasures, while other threads were home to millions of souls.  An orderly evacuation of the treasures and Library of St. Peter to Avignon is being carried out by French Troops placed at the disposal of the Pope.  The Vatican Thread is expected to collapse within the next twenty years, but is not in immediate danger.  

Despite counsel and please, the Pope has refused to excommunicate his archrival Lothair of Segni, who remained in Vatican City, effectively creating a schism between moderns and primitives within the church.  Lothair historically reigned as Innocent III, and comes from a small north Italian Thread, severed in 1103, but governed by the French Empire.

The pope "is on the verge of death," Cardinal Etienne Barragan, head of the Vatican's health care office, told the (DeGaulle) French television network RTF Télévision 2. "I talked to the doctors and they told me there is no more hope."  The Pope has not agreed to leave the French Empire, but has been attended by doctors from DeGaulle France, who have stated that there is very little suggestion that modern health care utilizing "normal and definitely ethical medicine" would prolong the Pope's life significantly.  Earlier this year the Pope rejected cloning with a statement that it was a "spiritually questionable" technology, and that it might tend to "create perceptions that diluted faith in the Papacy."

The Papal Nuncio at Avingnon has said the there will be an election within weeks since an Ecumenical Council is currently seated.  It is widely expected that the Council still seated at Vatican City will elect a rival Pope.