For those who research and teach Catholic Social Thought, it should have been immediately apparent why the first-ever American pope, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, chose what appears to be an antiquated name in Leo XIV. His namesake predecessor, from nearly 125 years ago, is Leo XIII—Gioacchino Pecci. Pecci was born in a tiny mountain town south of Rome in what was then a rapidly secularizing and industrializing French Empire. While reigning 25 years in two separate centuries (1878–1903), he is considered to be the official first bridge builder between ancient Catholicism and the contemporary world’s social and political-economic revolutions.
Leo XIII’s legacy is virtually synonymous with his 1891 social encyclical Rerum Novarum (“About New Things”), whose 134th anniversary was May 15. Rerum Novarum serves as the Catholic benchmark for the Church’s constant grappling with ongoing changes and challenges in the political, economic, and social orders, which are often in conflict with the principles of the gospel and timeless moral theological teachings. Will Leo XIV’s be about how the Church has judged and dialogued about the New Things of AI?
Read Full Article »