Le Pape (French pronunciation: [lə pap], "The Pope") was a political tract in verse by Victor Hugo, supporting Christianity but attacking the rigid organization of the Catholic Church.
Leo's predecessor, Pius IX, had revealed deep divisions in the Church with his definition of the dogma of papal infallibility in July 1870.
[...] the immaculate conception of the Holy Virgin, grog with a pretty Englishwoman -- those are the things that occupy Pius IX in Rome and Louis Bonaparte in Paris.
The work, a closet drama, depicts an unnamed pope falling asleep, and having a dream in which he participates in a pageant of scenes which represent generic situations in human history.
Through a sequence of discussions and soliloquies, the Pope reevaluates his beliefs, and concludes by giving a speech in which he condemns war and capital punishment, endorses the Republican ideals of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, and, in instructing the people to love one another, asserts that he abandons Rome for Jerusalem and Caesar for Christ.