By Braden Campbell
Leo XIII, who led the Catholic Church between 1878 and 1903, was best known for championing fair pay, safe working conditions, and the right to organize unions while rejecting socialism in favor of responsible capitalism. Leo XIV is expected to espouse similar ideas, using his bully pulpit as the spiritual leader for a sixth of the world’s population to draw attention to issues facing workers in today’s changing economy.
“The pope is always looked at as a moral leader in the world, and Pope Leo [XIV] will certainly be no different,” said Judy Conti, the director of government affairs at the National Employment Law Project. “The issues he chooses to champion will get a platform and a really prominent profile.”
The papal conclave to elect Pope Francis’ successor ended Thursday with the selection of Cardinal Robert Prevost, who took on the name Leo XIV. He was born in Chicago and is the first American pope, and he also served lengthy stints in Peru.
New popes choose their names intentionally, generally to show they admire the pope whose name they take on and intend to follow in his ideological and spiritual footsteps. Leo XIV shed light on the choice Saturday in his first address to the College of Cardinals, saying he will confront “new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice, and labor” posed by a new industrial revolution and the rise of AI.
Leo XIV’s framing of his papacy draws a parallel with the reign of Leo XIII, who became pope just as advances in manufacturing methods and technology kicked off the productivity jump known as the Second Industrial Revolution.
Leo XIII was best known for the “Rerum Novarum,” subtitled “Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor,” an 1891 missive responding to social changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution.
Leo XIII sharply criticized the socialist movement that industrialization had spurred, rejecting the abolition of private property as a misguided fix for the plights of workers. But he also criticized the excesses of capitalism, warning the wealthy against “misus[ing] men as though they were things in the pursuit of gain” and admonishing owners not to exploit “the indigent and the destitute” by paying unfair wages. He also encouraged the formation of pro-social organizations and associations, calling unions “the most important of all.”
“He was commenting on the divide between capital and labor, and he was saying that there really need not be a divide,” said Edward J. Bonett Jr., a Catholic, a partner in the labor practice at management-side Genova Burns, and an adjunct professor at Villanova University, where Leo XIV earned his undergraduate degree.
Leo XIV’s name choice suggests he has similar views about employers’ obligations to workers and the value of associations, Bonett said. His new role will provide him a sizable platform from which to share them.
“The papacy is one of the biggest bully pulpits in the world, especially now that you have popes that travel,” Bonett said. “[Leo XIV’s is] a message that can resonate for both conservatives and progressives.”
Patricia Campos-Medina, the executive director of the Worker Institute at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, said Leo XIV’s inauguration is a hopeful moment for unions and workers. He may act like a foil to tycoons like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos who have outsize influence with governments, especially in the U.S., she said.
“Having a church that has the moral high ground to call out corporate America to respect workers’ rights, I think that’s important,” said Campos-Medina, who is Catholic. “The American public supports union rights. … What we need to get to is that support turns into changing labor laws so that [workers] can actually have some balance of power with corporate America.”
Leo XIII’s messages were responses to the issues facing workers in his time, and Leo XIV’s apparent focus on AI is similar, Conti said. Not only does this technology threaten to replace workers with robots, it threatens to turn them into robots through oppressive monitoring tools, some of which are already in use, she said.
That practice is “anathema to all the teachings of the Catholic church,” which preaches the dignity of life from conception to death, Conti said.
“AI is one of the things he has very quickly spoken out on, which is fascinating to me, that he tuned into that … because it is something that is being used to undermine the dignity of people already,” Conti said.
But whether the pope’s preaching can influence AI or other workplace policy, including in the U.S., is “the $64,000 question,” she added.
The pope doesn’t write policy, but he can put ideas in the heads of those who do, Bonett said. He added the new pope may be uniquely influential to his home country, particularly if his ties lead him to visit more than Pope Francis, who came to the U.S. only once.
And even if they don’t agree with everything he says, the many Catholics in power — including Vice President J.D. Vance and six U.S. Supreme Court justices — may take signals from their spiritual leader, Bonett said.
“This message filtering down into the congregation, I think it’s going to give them some sense that they should act on it,” Bonett said. “It’s like, ‘Here’s your direction. Your direction is to make society less isolated, less antagonistic.'”
Read the full article on Law360: www.law360.com/employment-authority/articles/2338898