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There is Another Pope Leo You Definitely Need to Know
He was Great
Since the election of Pope Leo XIV two months ago, there has been much talk about the most recent pontiff to share his name, Pope Leo XIII, who reigned from 1878 to 1903. As reported on the Detroit Catholic website, the former Cardinal Robert Prevost explained his choice of name during his first meeting with the College of Cardinals two days after his election. He said that he chose the name in honor of Leo XIII because he recognized the need to “renew Catholic social teaching to face today’s new industrial revolution and the developments of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor.” He added: “Sensing myself called to continue in this same path, I chose to take the name Leo XIV mainly because Pope Leo XIII, in his historic encyclical Rerum Novarum, addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.”
There is no question that Pope Leo XIII is a fine role model for the new pontiff; Rerum Novarum is as timely today as it was when it was written in 1891, and once you get past the use of the “royal we” is a surprisingly easy read for a document that is 134 years old (thankfully they’ve stopped using it in the English translations, though it is often still found in the Latin original). That said, it bothers me a…
