Pope Leo XIV chose his papal name as a commitment to the Church’s social teaching amid a new revolution in artificial intelligence. Source: Crux.
In a meeting with the College of Cardinals on Saturday, the Pope said there were various reasons for choosing his papal name, “but mainly because Pope Leo XIII, in his historic encyclical Rerum Novarum, addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution”.
Rerum Novarum was written in 1891, addressing the conditions of the working classes and dealing with various social issues. It is widely hailed as having laid the framework for the Catholic Church’s modern social doctrine and its position on social issues, which were a bedrock of Pope Francis’s pontificate.
“In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour,” Leo said in his address.
He divided his speech into two segments, the first of which were prepared remarks to the cardinals, with the second portion dedicated to questions, suggestions, and proposals for concrete issues that had been discussed in the days leading up to the conclave.
Leo told the cardinals that their presence was a reassurance to him “that the Lord, who has entrusted me with this mission, will not leave me alone in bearing its responsibility.”
He urged them to view the death of Pope Francis and the conclave as “a stage in that long exodus through which the Lord continues to guide us towards the fullness of life”.
He asked cardinals to renew their “complete commitment” to “the path that the universal Church has now followed for decades in the wake of the Second Vatican Council,” which he said Pope Francis “masterfully and concretely” illustrated in his 2013 apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, the first of his papacy.
In reference to the document, Leo highlighted the aspects of the “missionary conversion” of the Christian community, as well as a growth in synodality and collegiality and increased attention to the sensus fidei (sense of the faithful), especially in its most authentic and inclusive forms, such as popular piety.”
He also underlined love and attention to the poor and rejected, and to dialogue with the modern world.
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Pope Leo says he chose name due to revolution of artificial intelligence (By Elise Ann Allen, Crux)
