When he took the papal name Leo XIV, it was widely suggested by Vatican commentators that the former Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was sending a message.

A message that, like the last Leo -- Pope Leo XIII, who was pope from 1878-1903 -- his own pontificate would be defined by specific social concerns.

Pope Leo XIV confirmed those conjectures when he first spoke to the College of Cardinals in Rome on May 10 -- two days after his election -- revealing that he chose his new name "mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic encyclical 'Rerum Novarum' addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution."

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"In our own day," the pontiff continued, "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 defense of human dignity, justice and labor."

So what might a new Leonine age look like for organized labor and economic justice?

"I talked to a number of our labor leaders -- Catholic labor leaders -- and we all had the same thought," Father Clete Kiley, chaplain to the Chicago Federation of Labor and a senior adviser at Unite Here International Union, told OSV News. "It was, 'Leo XIV -- that's like Leo XIII, and 'Rerum Novarum.''"

In that 1891 encyclical, Pope Leo XIII -- who came to be known as the "Social Pope" and the "Pope of Workers" -- strongly denounced the economic inequality that had arisen in his era.

"The hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few," Pope Leo XIII observed, "so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself."

He further noted "the ancient workingmen's guilds were abolished in the last century, and no other protective organization took their place." He recommended a revival of sorts -- the formation of "associations" in which workers would "unite their forces."

While not exactly equivalent to modern labor unions, the concerns of these workers' associations were similar; Pope Leo XIII advised that "wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice."

"Leo XIII broke ground dealing with new things," Father Kiley explained, referring to the English translation of "Rerum Novarum" ("Of New Things"). "And he was giving the guidance of the church with that. So I'm thinking that's what we're going to hear more of," he predicted of Pope Leo XIV.

Father Kiley also suggested Pope Leo will be concerned about rapid change on a number of labor policy fronts.

"Once you frame it as the future of work, I think there are related issues," he said.

"One is the environment, clearly. Whether people like environmental policy or not, the environment is changing. It's affecting work, the way people work, and where you can work," he said.

Father Kiley said migration is another consideration. At mid-year in 2024, the United Nations reported 304 million people worldwide were international migrants.

"Global migration is a reality. I'm not sure anybody handles that well. They let it be politicized so much -- and I don't think they're honest conversations, with such a broken system in this country," he added. "It's as though people want to deny the reality of how our economy works."

According to a 2019 report from the U.S. Census Bureau, immigrants in the United States make up approximately 1 in 7 residents, 1 in 6 workers and create about 1 in 4 of new businesses.

A third factor Father Kiley cited is artificial intelligence, or AI.

"AI could be a great sign of progress. It could also be a great threat to human freedom. I think we haven't explored it all -- the ethical and moral impact of how that's going to work," he said. "So I think Leo XIV is going to step into that. And I've heard that from other labor leaders, too."

Chuck Hendricks -- president of the Catholic Labor Network and director of national contracts and internal support at Unite Here International Union -- told OSV News that Catholic labor leaders he's spoken with are also enthusiastic.

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"Catholics that I know in the labor movements -- people in the social justice and social teachings wing of the church -- are very excited about having a pope choose the name Leo XIV," he shared. "They're excited about someone coming out of Chicago -- with its history around the church's social teachings."

During the late 1930s and early 1940s, the Chicago Catholic Worker was the most significant offshoot of Dorothy Day's group in New York City.

"I really hope he speaks out particularly on the rights of workers in the workplace," Hendricks added. "Over the years, we've had more conversations with the church about nationwide policies, or international policies. I really think having a pope speak out about workers in the workplace -- pushing to make things better for themselves and their families -- is important," Hendricks commented.

One place to start, said Hendricks, who works as a hospitality union organizer, is with the church's own operations.

"We engage in organizing food service workers at college campuses," he explained of UNITE HERE, "and see in many locations, the priests or the sisters at a Catholic campus come out eventually on the side that workers should have the right to a union, or on the side of living wages and affordable health care. Sometimes they don't. But in those instances," Hendricks stressed, "the church is really the boss of the employers, as they contract food service operations."

He believes the church should be a primary witness of workplace fairness; more than a million American workers are employed by Catholic hospitals, schools and other institutions -- but unions are not universal."The church has more to say broadly, in its moral teaching around the rights of workers -- but also specifically, as the person who hires the employers in hospitals, or colleges, et cetera," Hendricks noted. "I hope to see that those church teachings come more to life."

Hendricks also said AI will make an increasing workplace impact, adding he recently met with Microsoft, which proposed AI training.

"My union has been spending a lot of time thinking about how do you bargain over technology, and how do you bargain over potential technologies? It's really hard to do," he said. "And I think having my church speak out forcefully that AI should serve humanity and human dignity -- rather than serve Google, Microsoft and Facebook -- sounds right when our government is saying, 'No, we shouldn't.'"

On July 23, the Trump administration unveiled its new AI policy blueprint, which calls for limited AI regulation.

"When a government doesn't want to deal with it," added Hendricks, "I think it is time for the church to come and say something about the role of humanity in all of this."

Dan Graff, director of the Higgins Labor Program at the University of Notre Dame, suggested that Pope Leo XIV's election will heighten interest in many of the topics the pontiff seeks to address.

"Pope Leo's call for attention to labor questions, technology and migration -- which he's long been concerned about, and which is so inherently wrapped up in the labor question -- that's going to spur a lot more academic and social interest in the church on these questions," he said.

And while many of Pope Leo's concerns are of the moment, Graff, a labor historian, told OSV News he also sees a longer term pattern.

"The historian in me might say Pope Leo is tapping into something that's less like emerging at this second -- because of advancing technology in terms of AI -- but really something that we should think of that's been happening for the last 40 years," Graff explained.

"Because technology related to the financialization of the economy, the deterioration of the standard employment contract in the so-called first world -- I think it's a great framing device," he continued.

"We need historians there to make sure it's not seen as solely about the emergence of AI -- and we need to have a reckoning with the increasing inequality, the deterioration of unions, and other worker-based groups and public policies that temper the so-called free market. Because," Graff added, "we've really been in this era for decades now."

With increased economic strain predicted for low-income Americans following passage of the Trump administration's "One Big Beautiful Bill" -- and with Pope Leo XIV's own labor emphasis -- might unions experience a renaissance, as champions of fair wages and other benefits?

The union membership rate in America was 9.9% in 2024, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"I think unions have never been as popular as they are today for a reason: the wealthy in our society continue to find ways to transfer wealth and power away from workers and to themselves," Hendricks said. "People are seeing this in the workplace and in government. The cuts are just the most recent example -- and when people become angry about their conditions and hopeful they can make change together in solidarity, they will push back."

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"Our church and our unions," he concluded, "preach hope, justice and solidarity."

(Kimberley Heatherington writes for OSV News from Virginia.)