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

BarcelonaThe name by which each new pope wishes to be known says much about the personality and spirit he wishes to imprint on his pontificate. What, then, lies behind the choice of Leo XIV's name? Leo XIII (1878-1903) was a reformist pope, the first to issue a social encyclical, the Rerum novarum, with which he sought a "third way" between revolutionary socialism and hardline liberalism. He thus supported workers' right to unionize, while also strengthening the right to private property. His papacy would pave the way, politically, for Christian democracy in Europe. The election of the new pope, therefore, nods to a historic social outlook 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 by 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 the Roman Catholic Church 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 major 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, by trying to bring the Church up to date in the scientific field or by opening 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 arena, 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 political strength of the Vatican City State lost, he began the desire for global moral leadership.

While we do not know more details about the reason for Cardinal Robert Prevost's choice of name, the biography of Leo XIII predicts a papacy perhaps somewhat less courageous than the previous one, but along the same innovative lines opened by Francis.