The Catholic Church now has its first American pope, but Robert Francis Prevost’s papal name of Leo XIV is perhaps far more significant than his national origins.
The name gives a heavy hint about how the new pontiff might address our contemporary economic and social ills. The use of Leo points back to the reforming 19th-century Pope Leo XIII who, like Prevost, was faced with steering the Church through a world in ideological flux.
That the new pope has chosen to emphasise the legacy of Leo XII suggests he is aware of the revolutionary nature of the current economic age
Leo XIII was pontiff from 1878 to 1903. He is best known for his great 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which tackled the challenges of capital and labour at a time of rapid industrial change and revolutionary politics. There are parallels with our own age, as unchecked AI barons transform the world and political extremes fester.
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