Centesimus Annus at Thirty-Five

Thirty-five years ago, Pope John Paul II issued his most developed social encyclical, Centesimus Annus; its title signaled the author’s intention to honor the centenary of Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum, which launched the modern papal social magisterium. Yet Centesimus Annus, while paying due homage to Leo XIII’s enduring insights, was far more than a papal traipse down nostalgia lane. Rather, John Paul II used Rerum Novarum and the papal social encyclical tradition it inspired as the intellectual baseline from which to look into the future, as the Polish pope proposed certain moral and cultural prerequisites for the free and virtuous society of the twenty-first century.