Leo XIII's landmark encyclical defended the dignity of workers amidst industrial upheaval, Leo XIV steps into history with a call to peace in a time of global unrest. We are in an Evolutionary Moment
Prelude: As we welcome Pope Leo XIV, we do so with full awareness of the Church's failures as an institution. Church-sanctioned teachings too often became instruments of empire, rather than channels of Christ's peace. They upheld systems of enslavement, patriarchy, and racial hierarchy, instead of challenging institutions and bidding them to change. --
When Robert Francis Cardinal Prevost was proclaimed as Pope Leo XIV and then stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, for me it was a moment of disbelief and wonderment: The first American-born Pope in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. Then came his Urbi et Orbi (to the City and the World) blessing, in which he repeatedly, and beautifully, invoked peace.
"Peace be with you all"Peace be with you". The peace of the Risen Christ - - an unarmed and disarming peace, "uniting everyone, always in peace. "a Church that always seeks peace, "for peace in the world."
In this moment he was fulfilling both the Prayer of St. Francis, "Make me a channel of your peace," (a prayer that Elizabeth and I spoke and our guests sang at our wedding denoting the purpose of our partnership twenty years ago) and the dream of Pope Francis, for a successor of humility, service, pastoral care and continuity.
As someone who has spent most of my public life standing for peace, speaking for peace, working for peace, legislating for peace, this moment represented a leap from wild surmise to wild faith embracing the possibility that even as the world trembles from powerful forces of fragmentation, (some emanating from America), and while certain elements threaten to fracture the world politically, economically and militarily, the white smoke drifted upwards, cleared, and, enter a new Pope! Yes, an American. His message, peace and unity. A new Vicar of Peace on Earth for the Prince of Peace.
Cardinal Prevost's choice of the name Leo is a signal of union with the striving of the Church to be a voice for the voiceless, to exhort a theological foundation for Catholic action, guided by a moral vision which infuses eternal and temporal spiritual Christian principles into the material world, sanctifying it.
His namesake, Pope Leo XIII, brought to the furnace of the Second Industrial Revolution a desire to penetrate the truth of oneness, to reconcile the unity of opposites, labor and capital, rich and poor.
In his Encyclical, Rerum Novarum, "On Capital and Labor," Leo XIII established the moral case for labor unions and the rights of workers, amidst crushing western societal inequities of wealth and cruel working conditions and slave labor wages for workers. He was on neither the side of socialism nor capitalism. Human dignity transcended ideology.
The social doctrine of Leo XIII became definitive, a bedrock for 20thcentury Catholicism and would be reflected in the moral teachings of his papal successors, inspiring principles of social and economic justice to be integrated into everyday life in secular society.
This is how lay people, such as Dorothy Day, who co-founded the Catholic Worker Movement derived the moral authority to act. Her commitment to social justice came directly from Rerum Novarum. Generations were so inspired, myself included.
In 2004, as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President, in the spirit of and literally with words from Rerum Novarum, I was privileged to speak these same principles of support for workers' rights as a spiritual imperative, to the Iowa AFL-CIO, entitled "The Soul of the Worker."
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