Popes & Labor

          This month will mark the year anniversary of Pope Leo XIV's papacy.  He was chosen pope on 08 May 2025. His inauguration mass was 18 May.  

     May is also an international month celebrating labor.  Labor Day in many countries is May 1st.

       I'm not Roman Catholic, and I have plenty of differences in belief from that denomination. But this blogpost is not about doctrine nor doctrinal differences. 

        Of interest here: Leo XIV apparently took his name from Leo XIII. During the height of the abuses brought by the Industrial Revolution and the Gilded Age, Leo XIII took a stand in his 1891 papal encyclical (circular letter), Rerum Novarum. The stance he took was solid, direct and... in the middle. While supporting private property ownership and criticizing socialism, he came out strongly for workers' rights.      

      The proclamation slightly predated Theodore Roosevelt's presidency. (As an aside, TR was kind of Presbyterian but ended up old school Episcopal). The encyclical paralleled what TR sketched out in his Square Deal. 

       It took a vast deal of other effort to make headway for workers' rights. Theodore Roosevelt's era was the first breakthrough in the fits-and-start of the movement. Post World War 1, the balance shifted back towards the wealthy under Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. The Great Depression ushered in an era that favored workers, up until the 1980s, when policies shifted rapidly again.