120 Years of Catholic Social Teaching

On May 15th 1891, Pope Leo XIII published Rerum Novarum, On New Things, the first encyclical on social justice in the modern period. Leo XIII instigated what is now 120 years of teaching from the Catholic Church on social justice which defends the rights of the poor to work, health care, retirement, and rest, to labor unions, and called for a social system that denied the travesties of free market capitalism and state capitalism.

As we go through the current recession, we'd like to call to mind this call to social justice that Leo XIII articulated so well and to remember that it stems from the Gospels and from the whole of Catholic Christian tradition.