Rerum novarum and the age of AI

Travis Callaway • August 1, 2025

I first encountered the words Rerum novarum as a postgraduate theology student. I was completing a course on Catholic Social Teaching at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto’s seminary. An entire week was dedicated to Rerum novarum, the papal encyclical promulgated by Pope Leo XIII in 1891, now regarded as the foundational document underpinning Catholic Social Teaching.

I wasn’t yet Catholic, though my conversion was well underway, and my evangelical Baptist sola scriptura (“Bible alone”) roots made me wary of any “extra-biblical” guide.

But on reading Rerum novarum, a lightbulb went off.

As a finance professional working in asset management and venture capital, I had often witnessed greed, unfettered capitalism, financially motivated moral relativism, a distorted Protestant work ethic, and technological utopianism up close. Each distortion seemed to lead somewhere destructive: marriage-destroying workaholism, disdain for one’s literal neighbour, the idolatrous “prosperity gospel” perversion of Christianity, exacerbated smartphone addiction, egregious income inequality, and more. Equally, socialism and its horror-inducing communist variants, as witnessed throughout the twentieth century, could not offer a viable answer. But then, what could?

Reading Rerum novarum was a watershed moment.

I was struck by Leo XIII’s comprehensive analysis and became convinced that the antidote to modern economic and social problems—and the way to reconcile capitalism with Christianity—lay in Catholic Social Teaching, as initiated by Rerum novarum.

Within just a few years, I had become a practising Catholic, teaching business in secular universities and advising entrepreneurs using Catholic Social Teaching. I even co-founded a firm inspired by Leo XIII’s encyclical. Seeing the Holy Father step onto the loggia on 3 May and choose the name Leo was a particular joy.

Leo XIV explained to the Sacred College of Cardinals, during their first formal encounter after his election, that he chose his papal name “mainly because Pope Leo XIII, in his historic encyclical Rerum novarum, addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.” He added that, in our day, the Church offers her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice, and labour.

The papal name and its reasoning matter for several reasons. Let me explain just one.

Leo XIII’s 1891 Rerum novarum has much to say in 2025. He lived during a time of profound social change. Leo XIV recognises that we too live in such a time. The Church is once again called to respond to new social problems, some of which pose unprecedented threats to human dignity. Rerum novarum reminds us that it is the Church, not politicians or popular ideological movements, that must guide us through times of upheaval. The current political landscape in the West makes this painfully clear.

The political Left and its allies in academia, Big Tech, and mainstream media appear increasingly morally bankrupt. They struggle to acknowledge objective truths (even as they insist we “trust the science”) and repeatedly assault traditional Christian sensibilities. Across the West, Leftists and the institutions they’ve captured have embraced radical pro-abortion feminism, child-mutilating gender ideology, and the advocacy of sexual deviancy, while simultaneously excusing repressive Islam and ignoring open antisemitism. In a feat of mental gymnastics, they also champion “social justice” and quote Pope Francis selectively to promote “compassionate” inclusivity, all while imposing cultural Marxism-inspired forms of technocratic secular utopianism.

Meanwhile, many on the political Right are too quick to abandon conservative values for political expediency. Too many have grown comfortable with technologies and ideologies that are deeply anti-Christian and anti-life—as seen in conservatives embracing IVF to address the West’s demographic collapse and tolerating the vast pornography industry on pro-capitalist grounds.

Neither Left nor Right is capable of adequately responding to the crises facing our civilisation.

Leo XIII understood this during the upheavals of the industrial revolution.

Leo XIV understands it as we enter an AI-driven, over-technologised age of new social and economic turmoil.

In choosing this papal name, Leo XIV invites us to return to Rerum novarum and its Christian vision of justice, charity, and the common good amid the challenges of our time.