From the Allocution of Leo XIII to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility on January 24, 1903:
The Holy Family in Nazareth. Painting by Diego Quispe Tito, 1675
And Jesus Christ, although He chose to spend His private life in the obscurity of a lowly dwelling, passing for the son of a laborer, and although in public life He so loved to associate with the common people, helping them in every manner possible, still He chose to be born of royal stock, choosing Mary as a mother and Joseph as putative father, both of them scions of the Davidic line. And yesterday, the feast of their marriage, we were able to repeat with the Church the beautiful words, “Regali ex progenie Maria exorta refulget” [Mary shows herself to us all refulgent, born of royal stock].
Leonis XIII Pontificis Maximii Acta (Rome: Ex Tipografia Vaticana, 1898), Vol. 22, p. 368 in 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), Documents IV, p. 470.
