What’s in a reputation? So much it seems.
Matteo Bruni, a Vatican spokesman, instructed reporters on Thursday that Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost’s option to be known as Pope Leo XIV had been a transparent and deliberate reference to the final Leo, who led throughout a tough time for the Roman Catholic Church and helped marshal it into the trendy world.
Leo XIII — who was head of the church from 1878 to 1903, one of many longest reigns in papal historical past — is thought for his 1891 encyclical “Rerum Novarum,” which strongly defended the rights of working folks to a dwelling wage and set the tone for the church’s trendy social doctrine. He grew to become often called the “pope of the employees.”
“Addressing the rising socialist menace — because the church noticed it within the late nineteenth century,” Leo XIII “known as on the church to succeed in out to a working class and to mainly attempt to ameliorate a few of these targets of capitalism and to profit the working class and work out a amicable relationship between capital and labor,” mentioned David I. Kertzer, a professor at Brown College whose e-book “Prisoner of the Vatican” examined the position of Leo XIII’s predecessor, Pius IX, the final sovereign ruler of the Papal States. “In that sense,” Leo XIII is “seen as a type of connection between the pre-modern and the trendy church.”
“The selection of title is a average reference, in that Leo XIII was a pre-modern pope and conservative in some ways, however he was additionally a transitional determine reaching out to the poor,” mentioned Professor Kertzer. “You might say he was a middle-of-the-roader.” The number of the title Leo XIV “looks as if a alternative of following Francis, however taking the perimeters off,” he added.
Leo XIII was a robust pope who was “very a lot engaged within the problems with his time,” mentioned Robert Orsi, a professor of spiritual research and historical past at Northwestern College. “He responded with authority and compassion to the economic period” and defended employees’ rights and labor organizations.
Selecting to be known as Leo XIV may sign the brand new pope’s intention “to equally interact the problems of his time,” Professor Orsi mentioned.
Pope Leo XIV referred to the notion of a world church open to the world in his first deal with to the trustworthy on Thursday, which Professor Orsi mentioned may be a sign “that he’ll be difficult resurgent nationalism in all places on this planet.”
Mr. Bruni, the Vatican spokesman, mentioned that selecting the title of a pope related to the church’s trendy doctrine “was clearly a reference to the lives of women and men, to their work — even in an age marked by synthetic intelligence.”
Leo XIII started his reign with the papacy having misplaced its temporal energy when the Papal States it had dominated for a whole lot of years had been annexed by a unifying Italy in 1870. He sought to strengthen that the position retained an ethical authority that reached past nationwide borders, mentioned Roberto Rusconi, a church historian.
Mr. Rusconi added that Leo XIII had additionally deepened devotion to the Virgin Mary, writing 11 encyclicals on the rosary, the cycle of prayers invoking Mary that Catholics depend out on rosary beads. Leo XIV recited the rosary on the finish of his first deal with Thursday.
Leo XIII was the primary pope to appear on film. He based the Vatican Observatory, a analysis institute, as a sign of the church’s openness to science. “It have to be clear that the Church and its pastors don’t oppose true and sound science, each human and divine, however that they embrace, encourage and put it on the market with all doable dedication,” he wrote.
