Leo XIV: Reformer and Saver of Souls
To appreciate the promise and probable, future impact of Leo XIV, one must first consider his chosen name predecessor, Leo XIII.
Widely known as “the Pope of the Workers,” Leo XIII is best remembered for reviving the Church’s relevance in a rapidly modernizing world. In 1891, he penned what is inarguably the most consequential document on socio-economics the Catholic Church has ever produced — Rerum Novarum, “of revolutionary change.” Rerum Novarum addressed how the Industrial Revolution had altered the daily lives of the human family and advocated changes to promote and protect humanity’s deepest calling, which is to know and manifest God’s love. While its immediate concern was to ameliorate “the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class,” its enduring contribution was to assign timeless moral guardrails to three pillars of civilization: capital, labor and the state. Embraced by conservatives for its rejection of governmental collectivism and by liberals for its harsh criticism of free market excess, Rerum Novarum in fact does both. For example, Leo XIII argued all workers must fulfill their agreed upon tasks, but also instructed employers to provide work environments suited to each person’s inherent capabilities and needs, as well as the right to collective bargaining. Similarly, while workers and governments had to respect private property rights, employers were instructed to respect basic precepts of human dignity and pay their workers a living wage. In short, Leo XIII argued neither unbridled capitalism nor top-down socialism are capable of ensuring wholesome lives and human flourishing. Workers, owners and properly-empowered government officials must instead coalesce around a shared concept of the common good, where all have equal dignity, as well as respective rights and duties.
Leo XIV will likely set forth a similar moral framework that helps our increasingly fractured world keep God as its focal point. He will embrace the life-enhancing benefits of technology while decrying the moral challenges of AI. He will acknowledge the indisputable value of economic efficiency while rejecting the displacement of workers by machines. He will reaffirm man’s essential right to private property while reminding the rich of their disproportionate responsibility to support the poor. Like Francis, he will acknowledge the growing environmental strains eight billion consumers have put on our planet’s land, air and water — the very same ecosystem that in 1891 supported a mere 1.7 billion people with much more primitive living standards. Leo XIV may even speak about how free trade is consistent with the Church’s essential concept of “preferential options for the poor” while criticizing state-induced, global trade imbalances that undermine the rights of other workers and risk calamity for all. I hope and pray he will also put forward a vision for how a rapidly aging globe with limited retirement savings will care for its aged and infirm without disenfranchising younger generations
A second way to frame the promise and future impact of Leo XIV is to consider the remarkable life and teachings of his religious order’s patron, St. Augustine of Hippo.
St. Augustine is revered for his profound personal, philosophical and literary contributions to western civilization. His book Confessions — widely considered to be the first autobiography ever written — details his personal path from licentious youth to committed Christian, reflecting an arc of maturation we all ultimately feel. His equally famous book, The City of God reveals how Christianity explicitly calls mankind away from perpetual materialism towards a more heavenly destination, which he calls the New Jerusalem. Rather than committing oneself to the perpetual pursuit of earthly pleasures, St. Augustine encourages us all to seek out more eternal truths through spiritual devotion. “The Lord is the goal of human history, the focal point of the longings of human history and of civilization, the center of the human race, the joy of every heart, and the answer to all its yearnings.”
Leo XIV — the newly chosen, direct successor of Peter, the rock upon which Jesus promised to build his Church — will certainly lean into the communal ideals and evangelical longings that Leo XIII and St Augustine memorialized. Reformer and evangelizer, he will also energetically maintain that striving to build a better life for all in this, our earthly incarnation, will emulate and ultimately guarantee an even more rewarding incarnation in the life to come.
