If you know anything about Pope Leo XIV, it is likely that he chose his  name in part as a nod to his predecessor, Leo XIII, the father of modern Catholic social doctrine.

Leo XIII’s seminal 1891 encyclical letter, Rerum novarum, subtitled On the rights and duties of capital and labor “addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution,” as Leo XIV explained in remarks to the college of cardinals assembled in the Vatican’s New Synod Hall on May 10, just two days after his election.

“In our own day,” Leo continued in those remarks, “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 defense of human dignity, justice and labor.”