Tomorrow, Thursday, May 15, marks the 134th anniversary of the publication of Leo XIII's encyclical. Rerum novarum (On New Realities). It remains the basis of the Catholic Church's social doctrine and underlines the idea of human dignity and the need to combat the misery and poverty that plagued most workers of his time. The document's objective was to overcome both the depredations of the savage capitalism of his time and the violence then associated with revolutionary movements, and especially with anarchism. Let us remember that we are talking about 1891; the Lyceum bombing, for example, occurred in 1893. The world of Leo XIII was the height of colonialism and industrialization; that of Leo XIV was that of globalization and the second digital revolution, that of AI. These are two comparable realities, to be sure, although great care must be taken not to invoke certain anachronisms. What we now perceive as progress, or as regression, was often interpreted in a very different way in their time. In my little library there is one History of the Popes In four volumes published in Paris in 1841. The author is Amédée de Hertault. They are preceded by a long 64-page introduction by Pierre-Sébastien Laurentie (1793-1876)—in fact, it's a separate essay. Laurentie was an anti-modern, anti-liberal, and legitimist French writer. I believe he was the most reactionary thinker of his time, and undoubtedly the spiritual father of Gobineau and Joseph de Maistre, although he also had a significant influence on Balzac, for example. Reading this introduction, one can see that certain things that attract our attention today went completely unnoticed at that time, and vice versa.
The –let's say– wars of Leo XIII are not comparable to those of Leo XIV because they contain unpublished elements, especially in relation to the so-called culture warsMost popes have participated in theological, political (relative to the hegemonic kings or emperors of their time), or even military confrontations (the case of Pope Julius II at the beginning of the 16th century is perhaps the most extreme). In the 19th and 20th centuries, most popes also had to take sides in genuinely ideological disputes. Consider, for example, the crucial role of John Paul II in the fall of communism. Benedict XVI and Francis, on the other hand, were the first to confront certain cultural wars distinct from traditional ideological confrontations. In the case of Benedict XVI, his fight against postmodern relativism stands out; in the case of Francis, his attitude toward homosexuals, among other things. Ideological disagreements, cultural wars, the inevitable involvement in international politics, and the need to seek basic theological consensus within Catholicism are four types of issues, four that, despite sometimes being related, have distinct approaches and characteristics. Not knowing how to distinguish between them goes beyond the papacy, but: Kamala Harris lost the US presidential election because she responded to Trump's culture wars with ideological arguments. For his part, the US president has had to take the rap on the tariff war because he couldn't distinguish between the logic of international politics and the logic of his country's domestic problems.
Leo XIV is intellectually very well-rounded, and he also displays a balanced and serene demeanor. There is pressure for him to express a kind of absolute gestural continuity with the pontificate of Francis (I'm thinking of the highly anecdotal, but media-hyped, issue of the red shoes). This pressure can condition and even distort his project. The affinity with the legacy of the previous pope is evident, but this doesn't mean he should manage it without carefully differentiating between the four areas we detailed above. In some areas, surely the most important ones, he may strongly agree, and in others perhaps not so much (or not at all). Statements by Francis regarding the invasion of Ukraine that some sectors considered hasty come to mind, as well as the issue of the election of Chinese bishops and many other issues that will inevitably evolve. It's one thing to fully embrace Francis's theological legacy expressed in his encyclicals, and quite another to understand international politics as a static issue, for example. Papal battles have many fronts.
