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, 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 defence of human dignity, justice, and labour.I’ll spend more time reflecting on the potential importance of Rerum Novarum for these 21st-century challenges in a future article. Stay tuned to our blog, and visit slmedia.org/pope-leo-xiv for our latest coverage of this fourteenth Leonine papacy.
We join the Holy Father in praying that we might again learn how to discern, to know how to choose paths of life and reject everything that leads us away from Christ and the Gospel.
In his weekly General Audience, Pope Leo XIV continued the cycle of catechesis on "Jesus Christ our Hope" as part of the Jubilee 2025. He reflected on the raising of Jairus' daughter and the healing of the bleeding woman in Mark chapter 5. Commenting specifically on the bleeding woman, he said that "every time we perform an act of faith addressed to Jesus, contact is established with Him, and immediately his grace comes out from Him."
During the Jubilee of Bishops, Pope Leo XIV gave a meditation at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter's Basilica. He said that "a Bishop is a witness to hope by his example of a life firmly grounded in God and completely devoted to the service of the Church. This will be the case only insofar as he is conformed to Christ in his personal life and in his apostolic ministry. The Spirit of the Lord will then shape his way of thinking."
In his weekly General Audience, Pope Leo XIV continued the cycle of catechesis on "Jesus Christ our Hope" as part of the Jubilee 2025. He reflected on Jesus' healing of the paralytic in John 5. He said that "Jesus...takes this man back to his truest and deepest desire," and "helps him to discover that his life is also in his hands."
In this month of June, the Holy Father invites us to pray that the world might grow in compassion, that each one of us might find consolation in a personal relationship with Jesus, and from his Heart, learn to have compassion on the world.