On Saturday, May 10, Vatican media posted a video featuring Pope Leo XIV, who revealed to the College of Cardinals his reason for selecting the papal name of Pope Leo XIV.
According to Vatican correspondent for LifeSite News, Michael Haynes:
“Leo XIV explained his name choice to the cardinals today as ‘mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.
In our own day, 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 defence of human dignity, justice and labour.’”
NEW: Leo XIV explained his name choice to the cardinals today as “mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.
In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the… https://t.co/m1yvnLPhWl pic.twitter.com/z7hEhEK5QM
— Michael Haynes
(@MLJHaynes) May 10, 2025
At first glance, Pope Leo XIV’s selection for his papal name, based on a reaction to artificial intelligence, may appear an overblown response to this secular issue of technology.
On the contrary, however, Pope Leo XIV clarified his intention to simply offer a Christian perspective on this secular matter, by saying,
“In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution & to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour.”
At the age of 69, which is considered young for a Cardinal, Pope Leo XIV will preside over a swiftly changing international labor and technology landscape.
With the advent of Artificial Intelligence, Elon Musk has predicted that all jobs could be replaced by Artificial Intelligence.
In May, 2024, Elon Musk claimed:
“In a benign scenario, probably none of us will have a job. There will be universal high income — and not universal basic income — universal high income. There will be no shortage of goods or services.”
This week, Musk proposed that Artificial Intelligence should replace the US Federal jobs slashed by his Department of Government Efficiency.
Later this week, a new report published by Fortune predicted, “Nearly 20 million jobs are on the chopping block to be replaced by Artificial Intelligence.”
Evidently, as strongly as Christian conservatives may prefer to ignore Artificial Intelligence, this form of technology has now become seeded into our culture – with certain upsides, such as the capacity to eliminate redundant human labor needs, saving taxpayers money.
Should Musk’s envisioned technology landscape become a reality, then millions of citizens may eventually receive a government-backed universal high income to offset the lack of labor needs.
With nothing but free time for citizens, the Catholic Church could then offer an unparalleled sense of refuge for Catholics, and non-Catholics, alike, searching for meaning.
From this perspective, Pope Leo XIV’s papal name selection appears apt.
As it relates to previous Popes named Leo, from 1878-1903, Pope Leo XIII presided over the Catholic Church during the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Notably, Pope Leo XIII’s reign was the fourth-longest by any Pope. At age 93, Pope Leo XIII historically became the oldest-aged Pope.
Most famously, from 440-461, Pope Leo the Great preserved the sanctity of the Catholic Church, and Europe, by convincing Attila the Hun not to invade Rome.
In a striking parallel to Pope Leo the Great’s era, Europe must currently defend against a continental invasion by millions of illegal immigrants, who are increasingly upending Europe’s traditional culture without any jurisdiction.
If Pope Leo XIV seeks to uphold the honor of Pope Leo the Great’s lineage, he must be persuaded against his recent commentaries in support of illegal immigration.
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