How ‘Rerum Novarum’ Made Leo XIII a Pioneer of Social Justice

The pontificate of Leo XIII has been much studied by Catholic historians, both because in those years of the end of the century there were significant changes in the cultural, social and economic fields, to which the Pontiff was not insensitive, as on the occasion of the centenary of the Encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891), which gave scholars the opportunity to study the thought and work of Pope Pecci from various points of view of the sources.

How ‘Rerum Novarum’ made Leo XIII a pioneer of social justice

Pope Leo XIII — whose legacy Pope Leo XIV has invoked by choosing his name — opened the church to modernity with his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, a landmark text that responded to social upheaval and inspired Catholics to fight for workers’ rights and social justice.

In 1891, Pope Leo XIII published the Encyclical Rerum Novarum, in which he addresses the foundations of what we know today as the Christian Social Doctrine, a series of teachings that, in the light of the Gospel and the tradition of the Church, seeks to illuminate the current social, political and economic challenges. The text starts from the situation of workers in the context of the Industrial Revolution, marked by abuses, long days and lack o…