Wilde at the Vatican

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Oscar Wilde Meets Pope Leo XIII
—Spring, 1900—

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In the Spring of 1900, Oscar Wilde arrived at the Vatican, and like any tourist he had his photograph taken. He was on a Roman holiday to spend a little time with friends—but, as it turned out, he spent a lot of time with the Pope.

Wilde was no stranger to the Vatican. In April 1877 as he was returning from a tour of Greece with his Trinity College tutor, the Rev. John Mahaffy, when his friend David Hunter-Blair arranged an audience for him with the then Pope Pius IX.

23 years later in 1900, again in April, and just seven months before he died, Oscar met the current pontiff—this time the aging Pope Leo XIII.¹

Wilde arrived in Rome on the Thursday before Easter, and managed to procure a ticket to join the select faithful in the Vatican to be blessed by the Pope on Easter Day.

Wilde related the story of how this came about.

Apparently, a man, or as Oscar put it “what seemed to be one”, was loitering about the Hôtel de l’Europe, and he offered Wilde the ticket as he was taking afternoon tea—specifically, eating buttered toast.² It turned out that such ticket vendors were unscrupulous porters, or, again in Oscar’s words, “real robbers disguised as hotel porters”.

During his stay of about two weeks, Wilde spent all his money³ obtaining more tickets to be blessed by the Pope: no less than seven times⁴.

All of this must have made him somewhat connected because he wrote to Robert Ross⁵ to say “I am promised a seat for the canonization. or beatification, on the 24th.”⁶ This was not, however, a personal favor; indeed Wilde alluded to the fact that his Vatican visits might have been denied him had the Papal Court known who he was—which is probably why he was smug about a seat in the front rank of the pilgrims.⁷

As for the photographs, they were taken possibly by Robert Ross and probably with Wilde’s own camera—which he had recently purchased fancying himself as a budding photographer.

As you will see, I have managed to identify the location.

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The Apostolic Palace (which was sealed this week as part of the Papal Interregnum) is the official residence of the Pope.

The building contains the papal apartments, various offices of the Catholic Church and the Holy See, private and public chapels, Vatican Museums, and the Vatican Library, including the Sistine Chapel, Raphael Rooms, and Borgia Apartment.

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One should not infer from Wilde’s visits to the Vatican too strong an adherence to the Catholic faith in strictly theological terms.

During his life, Wilde’s had a long struggle of resistance and attraction to Catholicism, particular to its symbolism—although he did say it was the only religion to die in⁸ and he passed through a form of conversion on his deathbed.

But, at the time, Wilde told Ross that “I cannot stand Christians because they are never Catholics, and I cannot stand Catholics because they are never Christians.”⁹ He insisted, in any case, “I am not a Catholic, I’m a violent papist”.¹⁰

His attitude to it all was probably best summed up by his earlier remark (to a Unitarian minister) that the holiest place in Rome was Keats’s grave.¹¹

© John Cooper, 2025

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Footnotes:

1. Leo XIII was the first pope whose voice was recorded, and, separately, was also the first pope to be filmed by a motion picture camera. ↩︎
2. Complete Letters, 1180 ↩︎
3. Ibid, 1184 ↩︎
4. Ibid, 1191. ↩︎
5. Ibid, 1183 ↩︎
6. Wilde was referring to the beatification of Maria Crescentia Höss. She was a religious sister of the Third Order Regular of St. Francis who was canonized in 2001. ↩︎
7. Ibid, 1179 ↩︎
8. Ellmann, 583, citing Turner. ↩︎
9. Complete Letters, 1191 ↩︎
10. Ibid, 1184 ↩︎
11. Ibid, 247 ↩︎

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