By Christopher Wells
Meeting with the College of Cardinals for their first formal encounter after his election, Pope Leo XIV explained part of the reason for the choice of his papal name. “There are different reasons for this,” he said, before going on to explain that he chose the name Leo “mainly because Pope Leo XIII, in his historic encyclical Rerum novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.”
“In our own day,” he continued, “the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice, and labour.”
Pope Leo XIII “lived in a time of profound social change, a time in which the Church needed answers to many of the pressing social problems of the day,” says Dr Donald Prudlo, Warren Chair of Catholic Studies at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Like Leo XIII, we, too, live in “a period of immense social change” that challenges not only the Church and her teaching “but the very dignity of humanity.” Dr Prudlo says that Pope Leo XIV, in choosing his name, shows that the Church will be engaging “these very serious problems” marked by challenges to humanity and to human dignity, and in particular, the problems posed by artificial intelligence.
As in Pope Leo XIII’s time, the Church and the world are experiencing “not simply an epoch of changes, but a change of epoch, as Pope Francis described it.
In this interview with Vatican News, Dr Prudlo draws parallels between the era of Pope Leo XIII and our own era and the challenges facing the Church today at the beginning of the pontificate of Leo XIV.
Q: Doctor Prudlo, we heard morning from Pope Leo XIV as he spoke with the Cardinals about some of the reasons that he chose his name, Leo. And he referred especially to Leo XIII, the last Pope to bear the name, the great social reformer of the late 19th century. Can you talk to us a little bit about what the Pope told us about the connection between the times of Leo XIII and our own times?
Dr. Prudlo: Pope Leo XIII reigned from 1878 to 1903, so he was the first Pope of the 20th century. He lived in a time of profound social change, a time in which the Church needed answers to many of the pressing social problems of the day. Pope Leo XIV has told us why he chose this, in particular in reference to his great, the charter of Catholic Social Teaching, the encyclical Rerum novarum from 1891, which has proved to be the bedrock for all subsequent social teaching.
Pope Leo XIV knows that, just like as in his predecessor’s time, he lived in a period of immense social change, a change that was challenging not only the Church and the doctrines of the Church, but the very dignity of humanity.
And so when he took this name, he means for us to understand that just as Pope Leo XIII lived at a time of the transition to… in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, and he tried to weave a Catholic way, a Catholic interpretation, between the twin dangers of socialism and unfettered liberal capitalism.
Pope Leo XIV tells us that because of the challenges to humanity today and the challenges to human dignity, in particular the problems of artificial intelligence, he took the name in order to mark a new period where the Church is going to be engaging with these very serious problems.
Q: The Pope also spoke about the new industrial revolution. So in part, Leo XIII was dealing with the first industrial revolution. Can you explain a little bit about that and maybe offer a thought or two on what you imagine the Pope to be speaking of as a new industrial revolution?
In Pope Leo XIII’s time there was a massive urbanization. People were moving from the farms into the cities all over Europe and North America, and in so doing they encountered poor living conditions, poor labour conditions. They were being thwarted by business owners from forming unions. They were being suborned by new political ideologies seeking them to overthrow existing systems.
And Pope Leo wanted to reinforce the rights of the worker. He wanted to reinforce the dignity of the worker work and the dignity of the human person, particularly in its critical social unit, the human family.
Pope Leo XIV today sees a new inflection point. And that inflection point, I think, is the rise of artificial intelligence and mechanization, the rise of robotics, and the challenge that that’s going to present over the next ten, twenty years, maybe even sooner, to the dignity of labour, particularly as it challenges not blue collar labour, that is the labour of the factory worker that Leo XIII encountered, but also the labour of the white collar worker, the office worker, the person who programs computers, the person who teaches. And he wants to be at the forefront of ensuring that this transition, this critical transition in humanity.
The Church is always accompanying humanity through these radical transitions over the last 2,000 years; that the Church has a measured and a true and a definitive response that can help people to maintain their positions, their life, in justice, in the dignity of their work, and in the dignity of their human personhood.
Q: I want to pick up on two things that you said that struck me. One, you talked about the dignity not just of workers, but of work. And also Leo XIII dealt with the plight of workers. You mentioned the change now from the plight of blue-collar labourers, perhaps to more white-collar labourers in this era. But we also see many, many areas of the world where people are exploited in jobs like manufacturing jobs, like producing products for the developed world by people in the developing world. And both of those themes were very important to Pope Francis as well. And I think Leo XIV is picking up on that…
I think he’s very sensitive to the needs of exploited workers, having been a missionary bishop in South America. He knows about the conditions of the worldwide economic system, very often that rely on cheap labour and on, sometimes, unfortunately, slave labour in different countries of the world.
So, he is going to be a voice for those people, just as Pope Leo XIII was a voice for the voiceless in the first Industrial Revolution. Pope Leo XIV is going to continue that tradition, and he’s going to be a voice for those who are threatened, who are menaced by these different, unjust forms of exploitation in this world. And in that sense, he will be in continuity with Francis.
Q: I think you mentioned to the document that Leo XIV mentioned, Rerum novarum, the bedrock, the foundation of subsequent Catholic social teaching. I’d like to go back a little bit into history, and maybe you could give us a little bit of context around that encyclical so it doesn’t stand by itself. It was part of a very wide-ranging teaching by Leo XIII…
Leo was Pope for such a long time. There’s such a stability to his reign, and he addresses so many issues during it. And Rerum novarum was only one mark that he left on the Church, of social teaching, and was part of a broader and comprehensive return to the spiritual, return to people, considering what is the proper relationship of humanity to God, without considering just merely the horizontal political principles.
By putting humanity directly in relation with God, we begin to see the importance of things like Leo XIII stressed, like a living wage, or like the right to form workers’ unions, the right to decent and honourable labour because of the dignity that it conferred on the bearer and the need for providing for a family. And so, Pope Leo XIV is going to, is going to continue that in his work.
The conditions that Leo XIII encountered were terribly brutal. It was a century that the Church had gone through many revolutions, that there had been many challenges to Church authority, but not just Church authority, but the standard stabilizing pillars of society, the state, the family, and all of those different aspects of our lives.
Pope Leo XIII made sure that he was going to, with the wisdom of the Church, with the wisdom of Saint Thomas Aquinas that he so strongly supported; through the practice of the Rosary, which he wrote so many encyclicals on; through a focus on God; through a focus on human dignity, to articulate a new and comprehensive vision of Catholic social teaching and Catholic social justice that it was going to endure into the 20th century and be the basis for so much of later papal magisterium.
Q: With regards to Rerum novarum, as you said, it was part of the context of a comprehensive view of Catholic social teaching, but subsequent Popes have picked up, especially on Rerum novarum. We’ve seen Pope Pius XI, some 40 years later; I believe Paul VI, 80 years later; John Paul II, marked the 100th anniversary of Rerum novarum. And it’s been picked up also in the Magisterium of Benedict and Francis as well. But there’s a question that some people might ask: What right does the Pope have to address economic issues? What right do they have to talk about a minimum wage, about standards for workers, about how the government and management and labour all interact together. So maybe to finish up, you could tell us a little bit about the reason that the popes and the Church can speak to these issues?
The Church as a whole, led by the Pope, has the responsibility to speak out in matters of faith and morals. Now, in many prudential decisions, purely prudential decisions, people can have a variety of different ways of approaching an issue.
But there are certain moral certitudes there are certain, such as human dignity, such as the right to earn a wage that that can support one’s family, to defend the family within the social sphere, to defend the rights of workers.
The reason that the Church speaks out on these things is not to provide a specific political program, but to outline the boundaries whereby someone cannot go past.
One cannot deny the human dignity of a worker by paying them an unjust wage, something that cries out to heaven for vengeance. And so this is something that’s biblical. This is something that the Popes have reinforced throughout history.
You’re right that Leo XIII has provided this, this common touchstone revisited so often by the Popes. And that’s why this has really come full circle with Leo XIV and his assumption of that papal name, and his profound respect for the social teaching of the Church and the Church’s right to intervene in order to safeguard the dignity of not only her own believers, but the dignity of all humans in general. – Vatican News
