Who was Leo XIII, the pope with a social vision who inspired Prevost?

BarcelonaThe name by which each pope wishes to be known says a lot about the personality and spirit he wishes to imprint on his pontificate. The new pope, Leo XIV, confirmed this Friday that he has adopted that name in honor of Leo XIII and his social encyclical, Rerum novarum, who addressed the social question in a structured way for the first time during the first great industrial revolution. "He is a figure who guides me," he assured the cardinals who elected him as their 267th pontiff. The choice of the name is no coincidence: Leo XIII (1878-1903) was the first pope of the contemporary era to develop his own social doctrine, with a conciliatory approach between capital and labor that, more than a century later, continues to inspire reformist sectors within the Church.

What, then, lies behind the choice of the name Leo XIV? Leo XIII was a reformist pope, the first to issue the aforementioned encyclical with which he sought a "third way" between revolutionary socialism and hard-line liberalism. He thus supported workers' right to unionize, while also strengthening the endorsement of private property. His papacy would give rise, in the political sphere, to Christian democracy in Europe. The election of the new pope, therefore, nods to a historic social perspective at a time when there was also reactionary tension within the Church. In Catalonia, he is remembered as the pontiff who, in 1881, made the Black Madonna the patron saint of Catalonia.

Born in 1810 to a rural noble family in a village near Rome, Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Pecci was a pope attentive to the modern world who renewed Catholic philosophy, pivoting it around the teachings of Thomas Aquinas. He lived at a time of profound global change, with the unification of Italy and, consequently, the disappearance of the Papal States, which pitted the Vatican against Rome in a relationship that was not recovered until the 1920s. He also experienced the rise of Marxism and socialism, the expansion of European imperialist colonialism, and great technological and artistic revolutions.

Leo XIII was attentive to these changes from a moderate and conciliatory position and sought bridges between conservatism and the necessary evolution. For example, he tried to bring the Church up to date in the scientific field or opened the Vatican archives to both Catholics and non-Catholics, creating new academic centers in Rome to study the Scriptures, philosophy, theology, and astronomy. He also placed special emphasis on the intellectual formation of religious leaders, at a time when there was very little preparation to become a priest.

In the diplomatic field, he calmed the crisis with the Italian government, despite maintaining his distance, and improved relations with the German Empire and the French Republic, while initiating the expansion of the Catholic Church throughout the world. With the Vatican States' loss of political power, the desire for global moral leadership began.

While we still don't know more details about the reason for Cardinal Robert Prevost's choice of name, the biography of Leo XIII suggests a papacy that may be somewhat less courageous than the previous one, but along the same innovative lines pioneered by Francis.