![Atop Empire State- in construction; Chrysler Bldg & [Daily] News in middle foreground. (1931)](http://1-www-accel-pss.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?container=accel&gadget=howtobearetronaut.com&debug=0&nocache=0&v=u8u7jnqbdijrtp344779jt5bjs&rooe=1&html_tag_context=img&url=http%3A%2F%2Fhowtobearetronaut.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F05%2FAtop-Empire-State-in-construction-Chrysler-Bldg-Daily-News-in-middle-foreground.-1931--199x123.jpg%3F9d7bd4 "Balancing on the Empire State, 1920s")
Pope Leo XIII was born on Friday, 2nd March 1810 – his name was Count Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci. He was recorded reciting the Ave Maria in February 1903, in Rome. It is the earliest recording of the voice of a Pope, and and you can listen to it here.
Leo XIII died five months later. He was the first Pope to be born in the nineteenth century, and the first to die in the twentieth.
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Thank you to Jimmy Anderson.
Born two hundred years ago. WOW
My pleasure. He it was who made Fr John Henry Newman a Cardinal, so this is in a way topical as Newman will be beatified this year.