Pope Leo XIII
From Leo XIII’s encyclical Humanum genus against Freemasonry of April 20, 1884, we draw the following passage:
“Not without cause do We use this occasion to state again what We have stated elsewhere, namely, that the Third Order of Saint Francis…should be studiously promoted and sustained.
“Among the many benefits to be expected from it will be the great benefit of drawing the minds of men to liberty, fraternity, and equality of right; not such as the Freemasons absurdly imagine, but such as Jesus Christ obtained for the human race and Saint Francis aspired to: the liberty, We mean, of sons of God, through which we may be free from slavery to Satan or to our 
passions, both of them most wicked masters; the fraternity whose origin is in God the common Creator and Father of all; the equality which, founded on justice and charity, does not take away all distinctions among men, but, out of the varieties of life, of duties, and of pursuits, forms that union and that harmony which naturally tend to the benefit and dignity of the State.”
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII: A Theme Illuminating American Social History (York, Penn.: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 1993), Appendix III, p. 384.
