Pope Leo XIII is depicted seated in an official Vatican portrait circa 1878. Photo: CNS/Library of Congress Russell Shaw
Cardinal Robert Prevost has selected the name Pope Leo XIV, an apparent nod to Pope Leo XIII, who deserves to be called the founding father of Catholic social doctrine in modern times, with his encyclical Rerum Novarum as its foundational document.
The Catholic Church has taught social morality for many centuries. This body of teaching includes moral principles like the dignity and inviolability of the human person, the right to private property, the conditions for a just war and much else.
Commonly known by the title ‘On the Condition of the Working Classes’, the lengthy Rerum Novarum sets out a body of papal teaching in response to the state of industrial society in the late 19th century. In doing so, says Catholic writer Robert Royal, Pope Leo’s 1891 encyclical “has shaped Catholic social teaching ever since.”
The future pope, Gioacchino Pecci, was born March 2, 1810, in Carpineto, a town in the hill country south of Rome. He began his career as an administrator in the Papal States – first, as governor of Benevento and then of Perugia. In 1843, Pope Gregory XVI named him nuncio to Belgium. He was named a cardinal in 1853. He was elected on February 20, 1878. No doubt to the electors’ surprise, Pope Leo went on to serve as pope for 25 years, making his pontificate the third longest in history, after only those of Pius IX and Pope St John Paul II.
Political
On the political side, he achieved limited but real success, especially in Germany, where estrangement between the government and the Church was largely healed. Elsewhere there was little or no improvement. But beyond the sphere of politics, the years of his pontificate saw significant growth for the Church in many places, along with a continued expansion of missionary efforts.
He brought to the papacy a comparatively gentle manner of expressing himself, together with a genuine desire for reconciliation between the Church and the secular culture taking shape in the late 19th century.
On the intellectual level, one of his most significant actions was to promote a revival of the thought of St Thomas Aquinas, the great 13th-century philosopher and theologian. He called on the bishops to join him in promoting Thomistic studies and established an academy for this purpose in Rome.
He positioned himself on the side of the working class, affirming such things as the right of workers to decent working conditions, a just wage, labour unions and the right to strike”
But two other documents of Pope Leo stand out. One is Rerum Novarum, dated May 15, 1891.
Responding to what he calls “socialism” – understood broadly to include any social movement or school of thought advocating the abolition of private property – Pope Leo vigorously defended the right of private ownership as a natural right and necessary basis for the exercise of other rights. But in doing so, he positioned himself on the side of the working class, affirming such things as the right of workers to decent working conditions, a just wage, labour unions and the right to strike.
The great novelty of Rerum Novarum does not lie in championing these things but in the fact that they are here championed by a pope, which historian Eamon Duffy calls “truly revolutionary.”
The introduction of Rerum Novarum, setting the encyclical in the context of the social tensions of its time, is noteworthy in this regard. Writing of the “spirit of revolutionary change” then abroad in the world, Pope Leo said:
Elements
“The elements of the conflict now raging are unmistakable, in the vast expansion of industrial pursuits and the marvellous discoveries of science; in the changed relations between masters and workmen; in the enormous fortunes of some few individuals and the utter poverty of the masses; the increased self-reliance and closer mutual combination of the working classes; as also in the prevailing moral degeneracy… There is no question which has taken deeper hold on the public mind.”
As pope, Leo XIII reigned with a decidedly monarchical style. But he was also, in the words of a papal chronicler, “a man of deep, conservative piety.” He died July 20, 1903, at age 93 – the oldest man to occupy the papal office up to now and, thanks to Rerum Novarum, also among the most influential.
Russell Shaw, a veteran journalist and writer, is the author of more than 20 books, including three novels.
First, care about the interests of the soul
Pope Leo XIII
25. If Christian precepts prevail, the respective classes will not only be united in the bonds of friendship, but also in those of brotherly love. For they will understand and feel that all men are children of the same common Father, who is God; that all have alike the same last end, which is God Himself, who alone can make either men or angels absolutely and perfectly happy; that each and all are redeemed and made sons of God, by Jesus Christ, that the blessings of nature and the gifts of grace belong to the whole human race in common, and that from none except the unworthy is withheld the inheritance of the kingdom of Heaven.
[…]
28. Neither must it be supposed that the solicitude of the Church is so preoccupied with the spiritual concerns of her children as to neglect their temporal and earthly interests. Her desire is that the poor, for example, should rise above poverty and wretchedness, and better their condition in life; and for this she makes a strong endeavour. By the fact that she calls men to virtue and forms them to its practice she promotes this in no slight degree. Christian morality, when adequately and completely practiced, leads of itself to temporal prosperity. […]
40. The working man, too, has interests in which he should be protected by the State; and first, there are the interests of his soul. Life on Earth, however good and desirable, is not the final purpose for which man is created; it is only the way and the means to that attainment of truth and that love of goodness in which the full life of the soul consists. It is the soul which is made after the image and likeness of God; it is in the soul that the sovereignty resides in virtue whereof man is commanded to rule the creatures below him and to use all the earth and the ocean for his profit and advantage. “Fill the Earth and subdue it; and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the Earth.”(29) In this respect all men are equal; there is here no difference between rich and poor, master and servant, ruler and ruled, “for the same is Lord over all”… It is not man’s own rights which are here in question, but the rights of God, the most sacred and inviolable of rights.
Fragment from the late pope Leo XIII encyclical Rerum Novarum.