Italian
The election of Pope Leo XIV brings back into the limelight the Rerum Novarum, which translates into “Of new things“, the 1891 encyclical by Pope Leo XIII that laid the foundation for the Church’s social doctrine.
Starting from a historical context where we find the Church, having lost all temporal power (Porta Pia 1870), seeking its spiritual role in the face of a modern State, with a scenario marked by the strong tensions of the industrial revolution. With socialism and capitalism appearing unable to provide peoples with justice and adequate answers.
Eighty years later, Paul VI promulgates Octogesimo Anno, that is eighty years after Rerum Novarum, starting a reflection and exhortations similar to the first encyclical but at the same time attenuating its monolithic nature.
Today, over 130 years have passed and these concepts return with undiminished force to light, especially for one reason, on the throne of Peter, Pope Leo XIV ascends, and chooses that name after 122 years, highlighting traces never lost. More and more relevant.
Robert Francis Prevost, Pope Leo XIV, by collecting a well-defined inheritance, seems to update concepts that did not hesitate at the time to broaden their thinking on social justice, workers’ rights, human dignity, and as anticipated, which occurred in a time marked by economic turmoil and ideological conflicts, as well as social dazzles.
Pioneering in its essence, Rerum Novarum did not hesitate to embrace the theses on the conditions of the working class, clearly opposing both socialism and wild capitalism, fearlessly advocating for rights, dignified wages, and the freedom to have independent thought and speech.
The social doctrine of the Church had its dawn by translating these concepts and today the election of Pope Leo XIV reopens a small great ancient world that seems to have come a long way, but without ever reaching the end, born from the urgency of having fair and lasting answers, in the name of the dignity of the person, with the State that, while not absorbing the individual or the family, must guarantee freedom within the limits of the common good, safeguarding social balance and justice where dangers are perceived.
The new pontificate of Prevost in this sense, elevates the Rerum Novarum to a sort of new contemporary season that brings back traces and inspirations. With history repeating itself, in a rapidly changing and unsettling world.
Photo credit by Wikimedia Commons – Wikipedia
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