Pope Leo XIII and Catholic Social Teaching: June 15, 2025

Modern Catholic Social Teaching began in 1891 with Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum  (translated as: Of New Things).   Written as the Industrial revolution was taking place, the Church took a stand on how secular society should be ordered.  This was the first time the Church had acted to influence world leaders since the fall of Christendom and its intimate relationship with Emperors and Kings.  After the fall of the papal states in 1870, the Vatican had lost its recognition as a world power.  Its influence was solely in religious affairs.  Rerum Novarum changed this forever. “Therefore, venerable brethren, (previously) when it seemed opportune to refute false teaching, we have addressed the interests of the Church so (now, I have) thought it expedient to speak on the condition of the working classes.” Leo XIII spoke directly to secular society on the “Rights of Capital and Labor.”   The Church no longer would be silent on how it thought pluralistic societies should be ordered.    Leo XIII taught that it was the Church’s duty to declare the dignity of human workers to the world.   Leo encouraged the new worker unions as a way to “remedy the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the working class. We may lay down as a general and lasting law that working men’s associations should be organized to (help the) individual better his condition in body, soul, and property, (and) all men should (realize that the) main thing needed is to re-establish Christian morals.”  Just last month, 135 years later, Pope Leo XIV echoed this. “Let us pray that through work, each person might find fulfillment, families might be sustained in dignity, and that society might be humanized.”

Totally Catholic Trivia: Rerum Novarum was so instrumental that Pope Pius XI would write the encyclical, Quadragesimo  Anno and Pope JPII, Centisumus Annus, expanding Catholic social teaching on the 40th and 100th anniversaries of its publication!