Pope Leo XIV

It has been suggested that Cardinal Prevost, as he was, chose the name Leo to indicate admiration for Pope Leo XIII, who reigned in the late nineteenth century, and was, inter alia, responsible for the encyclical Rerum Novarum, “Of New Things.” Pope Leo XIII was against radically new things, but he did, for example, give conditional approval to labor unions, while opposing the nationalization of property. As I recall, the encyclical stated that fathers have the duty to leave profitable property to their children, which [it said] cannot be done without private property in land. Leo the Thirteenth did not explicitly condemn land value taxation, nor denounce Henry George by name, but George interpreted the encyclical as an attack on his views and his movement (as it probably was), and responded with An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII. He was polite, but expressed his points of disagreement with the Pope.

There were and are Catholic Georgists, and there are questions about just what was intended by the encyclical, and how various statements in it are to be construed. Some more recent papal encyclicals have been implicitly more favorable to Georgist views — not that the Catholic Church has gone Georgist, or that the late Pope Francis was necessarily familiar with Georgism, but there are statements about social Justice and environmental preservation which seem compatible with a Georgist outlook.

So, anyway, God bless the new Pope Leo (whether there is a God or not), and I hope that his teachings will not drive any wedges between Catholics and Georgists, or pose problems to those who endeavor to be both.