When explaining why he took the papal name Leo XIV, the former Robert Francis Prevost said there were “different reasons for this,” but “mainly because Pope Leo XIII, in his historic encyclical ‘Rerum Novarum’ addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.”
“In our own day,” he added, “the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice, and labour.”
It’s worth noting that “Rerum Novarum” is an important encyclical — one which laments certain economic injustices, but also affirms the dignity of the common man against the elite — and notes that “the socialists, working on the poor man’s envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies.”
“Socialists, therefore, by endeavoring to transfer the possessions of individuals to the community at large, strike at the interests of every wage-earner, since they would deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his wages, and thereby of all hope and possibility of increasing his resources and of bettering his condition in life,” he writes.
And if you think that’s some good stuff from Pope Leo XIII, who headed the Catholic Church between 1878 and 1903, you haven’t seen anything yet.
The depredations of socialists formed just part of “Rerum Novarum.” In fact, Leo XIII went even further in the encyclical “Quod Apostolici Muneris,” which was specifically addressed to the effects of socialists — who, he said, sought not just to do away with property or wealth but the entire rightly ordered system of human existence.
“We speak of that sect of men who, under various and almost barbarous names, are called socialists, communists, or nihilists, and who, spread over all the world, and bound together by the closest ties in a wicked confederacy, no longer seek the shelter of secret meetings, but, openly and boldly marching forth in the light of day, strive to bring to a head what they have long been planning – the overthrow of all civil society whatsoever,” he wrote in the 1878 encyclical:
Surely these are they who, as the sacred Scriptures testify, “Defile the flesh, despise dominion and blaspheme majesty.” They leave nothing untouched or whole which by both human and divine laws has been wisely decreed for the health and beauty of life. They refuse obedience to the higher powers, to whom, according to the admonition of the Apostle, every soul ought to be subject, and who derive the right of governing from God; and they proclaim the absolute equality of all men in rights and duties. They debase the natural union of man and woman, which is held sacred even among barbarous peoples; and its bond, by which the family is chiefly held together, they weaken, or even deliver up to lust. Lured, in fine, by the greed of present goods, which is “the root of all evils, which some coveting have erred from the faith,” they assail the right of property sanctioned by natural law; and by a scheme of horrible wickedness, while they seem desirous of caring for the needs and satisfying the desires of all men, they strive to seize and hold in common whatever has been acquired either by title of lawful inheritance, or by labor of brain and hands, or by thrift in one’s mode of life.
In our social media age, this is the kind of language that would get met with a sarcastic, if approving, “Well, tell us how you really feel.”
But, it gets better, as he goes on to discuss those states which, even where Protestantism was the predominant faith, had slid into a sort of spiritual anarchy — including in academia.
Hence, by a new species of impiety, unheard of even among the heathen nations, states have been constituted without any count at all of God or of the order established by him; it has been given out that public authority neither derives its principles, nor its majesty, nor its power of governing from God, but rather from the multitude, which, thinking itself absolved from all divine sanction, bows only to such laws as it shall have made at its own will. The supernatural truths of faith having been assailed and cast out as though hostile to reason, the very Author and Redeemer of the human race has been slowly and little by little banished from the universities, the lyceums and gymnasia — in a word, from every public institution.
Moreover, roughly a century and a half before the typical progressive atheist would automatically default to “Well, you know, Jesus came for the poor …”-style arguments with religious conservatives, Pope Leo XIII saw through this kind of thing.
For, indeed, although the socialists, stealing the very Gospel itself with a view to deceive more easily the unwary, have been accustomed to distort it so as to suit their own purposes, nevertheless so great is the difference between their depraved teachings and the most pure doctrine of Christ that none greater could exist …
For, while the socialists would destroy the “right” of property, alleging it to be a human invention altogether opposed to the inborn equality of man, and, claiming a community of goods, argue that poverty should not be peaceably endured, and that the property and privileges of the rich may be rightly invaded, the Church, with much greater wisdom and good sense, recognizes the inequality among men, who are born with different powers of body and mind, inequality in actual possession, also, and holds that the right of property and of ownership, which springs from nature itself, must not be touched and stands inviolate. For she knows that stealing and robbery were forbidden in so special a manner by God, the Author and Defender of right, that He would not allow man even to desire what belonged to another, and that thieves and despoilers, no less than adulterers and idolaters, are shut out from the Kingdom of Heaven.
You can easily see the guy hunting Reds with J. Edgar Hoover, with that kind of talk.
He also had a message for the politicians for today, as well:
… if the will of legislators and princes shall have sanctioned or commanded anything repugnant to the divine or natural law, the dignity and duty of the Christian name, as well as the judgment of the Apostle, urge that “God is to be obeyed rather than man.”
Even family life itself, which is the cornerstone of all society and government, necessarily feels and experiences the salutary power of the Church, which redounds to the right ordering and preservation of every State and kingdom.
This sounds like a Catholic Ben Shapiro, a century and a half early.
And, if socialists or their ilk were to prevail, “one of two things must occur: either the greater portion of the human race will fall back into the vile condition of slavery which so long prevailed among the pagan nations, or human society must continue to be disturbed by constant eruptions, to be disgraced by rapine and strife, as we have had sad witness even in recent times.”
Perhaps this is why some are calling the two Leos — XIII and XIV — “based” on social media:
Found this photo of Pope Leo XIII’s tomb that I forgot I took at St John Lateran Basilica 1 week before the election of Leo XIV.
Mind you, I had no idea who Leo XIII was at the time. I just thought he looked based. pic.twitter.com/htwlcoD9iB
— Catechumemes (@catechumemes) May 15, 2025
He is speedrunning all the most based things each pope since Leo XIII has done, we are so, incredibly, back https://t.co/Oqtva0oLU7
— XP ???? (@xpstudiosp) May 11, 2025
They are trying to portray him as a far-left individual.
He isn’t. He isn’t a communist.
Pope Leo XIII was one of those INCREDIBLY BASED papicies.So have some hope.
He’s a White Sox fan. ⚾ pic.twitter.com/rzIyAGp35d— Crimson Jester (@OGCrimsonJester) May 11, 2025
Now, of course, it’s early days. The new pope has just been installed, and his mission is that of the Catholic Church, not of American conservatives.
But it’s pretty fair to say that the man whose papacy he chose to honor with his name was, indeed, based — especially when it came to calling out socialists and the damage they sought to wreak upon God’s order, be it through property, freedom, family, or justice.
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