Looking back on Rerum Novarum

Matthew Neugebauer

Monday, May 26, 2025

Grey stone statue of Pope Leo XIII, wearing a cope and a papal tiara.

Statue of Pope Leo XIII, above the entrance to his tomb in St. John Lateran Basilica. Photo by Alexander Du. © Salt + Light Media, 2025.

Pope Leo XIII is about to become a household name again, now that his latest successor has taken on his name. A quick search of Google Trends reveals that the search term “Leo XIII” hit the height of its popularity on May 8, the day Pope Leo XIV was elected. In his Address to the College of Cardinals a few days after his election, our new pope explained that he chose the name Leo “mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question [the Church’s response to social, political, and economic issues] in the context of the first great industrial revolution.”

The encyclical’s peak viewing date on Google Trends? Also May 8. On that day, the search popularity of both Rerum Novarum and the pope who wrote it thoroughly dwarfed all data on either term since 2004, the earliest stats available.

In a previous article, I mentioned a few notable popes named Leo throughout history, pointed out that popes choose their names to signal a significant theme in their pontificates, and highlighted the fact that Rerum Novarum is the main reason for Pope Leo XIV’s name choice. In this article, I’ll look back on Leo XIII’s groundbreaking encyclical. In subsequent articles, I’ll reflect on the potential importance of Rerum Novarum for a 21st-century pope addressing 21st-century concerns.

On New Things

Leo XIII wrote and published the document in 1891, beginning the enduring tradition of Papal Social Teaching. In light of the precarious and often abject conditions of mines, urban factories, railroads, and other industrial innovations, he called for just and healthy working conditions, fair wages (#43-47), and the rights of workers to organize into unions and advocate for their needs (#48-57). He did so by rooting his appeal in a Christian affirmation of human dignity and the common good, while at the same time upholding the right to private property and the integrity of the family (#9, 12-14).

While we might take the rights to just labour conditions and unionization for granted today, Leo XIII’s magisterial endorsement of them was a stunningly bold stance at the end of the nineteenth century in favour of common people. Similarly, we might not see any opposition between working conditions and unions on the one hand and private property and family rights on the other today. However, the political context of Leo XIII’s day was marked by an intense polarization between the two, as alternative responses to the tumultuous challenges of his time, especially the widening chasm between the rich and the poor (#1). Rerum Novarum is a sharp rebuke to the extremes of unbridled capitalism that let employers and corporations dehumanize their workers, and authoritarian socialism that sought to alleviate the plight of the worker through total state control of work, property, production, and family life (#4, 5, etc.).

Leo XIII’s response is that both capital (employers, property) and labour (workers, unions) have both rights and duties, since all people in a society have rights and duties to each other. All are called to “live together in concord and go forward prosperously and with good results” (#58). He expressed the hope that “if Christian precepts prevail,” as opposed to capitalist or socialist ones, then

the respective classes will not only be united in the bonds of friendship, but also in those of brotherly love. For they will understand and feel that all men are children of the same common Father, who is God; that all have alike the same last end, which is God Himself, who alone can make either men or angels absolutely and perfectly happy ; […] that the blessings of nature and the gifts of grace belong to the whole human race in common (#25).

Ultimately, he called for increased government regulation of industry to protect the rights and well-being of workers, especially the poor (#35-37), while also preserving the right to private property (#38).

Subsequent popes would see Rerum Novarum as the origin and baseline for Catholic Social Teaching. To express this, they published their own encyclicals looking back on Leo XIII’s achievement and reflecting on his contributions for their own time: the 40th anniversary Rerum Novarum was celebrated by Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno in 1931; St. John XXIII’s Mater et Magistra marked its 60th in 1961; St. Paul VI’s Octogesima Adveniens in 1971 (an “Apostolic Letter” and “Call to Action”) marked its 80th; and St. John Paul II’s Laborem Exercens in 1981 and Centesimus Annus in 1991 celebrated its 90th and 100th respectively.

Laborem Exercens is notable as a reflection on the requirement that employment, working conditions, wages, and a worker’s personal investment in his or her tasks are servants of universal human dignity, rather than ways to lift up some and bring down others. Following the lead of Pope Leo XIII, John Paul II powerfully sought a third way between unbridled capitalism and authoritarian socialism at the end of a Cold War that pitted the two against each other (see #7, 11). The foremost tangible example that comes to mind is his support of the Solidarnosc (or “Solidarity”) union movement in his native Poland, which led to the restoration of democratic government in Eastern Europe.

The next milestone year for Rerum Novarum, its 140th anniversary, is six years away. That’s an extremely short time for a Church that “thinks in centuries,” but an incredibly long time given the blistering pace of technological, industrial, political, and socio-economic change in our day. By choosing his name, Pope Leo XIV has already has already begun calling us to reflect on the lessons of Rerum Novarum for the defining issues of our time, and is signalling that this reflection will be a significant task of his pontificate. In his first few weeks in the Chair of St. Peter, he’s already shown himself to be a very thoughtful and engaging pope, and responsive to the concerns and hopes of the world. We look forward to this thoughtful, engaging, and responsive leadership as he develops the enduring tradition of Catholic Social Teaching for the great challenges and potential of the 21st century.

In my next few articles, I’ll turn to considering why Pope Leo XIII’s landmark document might be significant for Pope Leo XIV.