Matteo was the son of Nicola Liberatore, a magistrate, and Caterina De Rosa who was from a noble
Albanian family of
Barile. He studied at the College of the Jesuits at
Naples in 1825, and a year later applied for admission into the
Society of Jesus, entering the novitiate on 9 October 1826. He taught philosophy at the Jesuit college of
Naples for eleven years, from 1837 until the
Revolution of 1848 drove him to
Malta. On returning to Italy he was appointed to teach theology, but gave up his professorship in 1850 to cofound
Civiltà Cattolica, a periodical founded by the Jesuits to defend the cause of the Church and the papacy, and to spread the knowledge of the doctrine of
Thomas Aquinas. Liberatore's helped bring about the revival of the
scholastic philosophy of Aquinas, publishing his own course of philosophy in 1842. This movement he promoted in the classroom, by textbooks on philosophy, by articles in
Civiltà Cattolica and other periodicals, by larger and more extensive works, and also by his work as a member of the
Accademia Romana by appointment of
Leo XIII. In 1879 he contributed to Leo XIII's encyclical
Aeterni Patris on scholastic philosophy, promoting the teaching of Thomism in all Catholic schools. He also collaborated in the writing of the encyclical
Immortale Dei (1885) and of Leo's ground-breaking social encyclical
Rerum novarum (1891). For 42 years, from 1850 to 1892, Liberatore published over 390 articles, many apologetic in defense of the
Holy See, drawing attention to
Civiltà Cattolica. He predicted a more universal role for the papacy with the loss of temporal power. He was a close collaborator with Pius IX and Leo XIII and taught a philosophy course at the
Pontifical Gregorian University where his students included Ambrogio Ratti, the future
Pope Pius XI. ==Works==