Leo XIII

Leo XIII inherited a papacy stripped of political power and turned it into a moral voice for the modern world. His 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the brutal conditions of industrial workers, defending their right to fair wages, reasonable working hours, and labor unions while rejecting both unregulated capitalism and socialism. It was the first major papal document on social justice in the industrial age and launched an entire tradition of Catholic social teaching. He wrote eighty-six encyclicals in total, more than any pope before or since. He promoted the study of Thomas Aquinas, reviving Thomistic philosophy as the intellectual backbone of Catholic theology. He opened the Vatican Secret Archives to outside scholars, confident that the Church's history could withstand scrutiny. He also encouraged biblical scholarship and tried, with limited success, to reconcile the Church with democratic governments. Leo XIII lived to ninety-three and died in 1903, having transformed the papacy from a wounded, defensive institution into one that could speak to the modern world on its own terms.