The writer is author of ‘Hitler’s Pope’, ‘The Pontiff in Winter’ and ‘Earth to Earth’
What was he thinking? Leo XIV! A tribute clearly to Leo XIII, pope from 1878 to 1903, a major pin-up boy for Catholics through the first half of the 20th century. As a Catholic schoolboy in the 1950s, I learnt by heart whole chunks of Leo’s celebrated encyclical, Rerum Novarum — Of New Things.
That papal letter to the world insisted on the rights and dignity of workers, a living wage, even the right to strike, while condemning socialism and capitalist greed in equal measure. It has been the foundation of Catholic teaching on “the common good” to this day.
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