What’s in a Name? In the Case of Leo XIV, Lessons in Bridging Historical Shifts

What’s in a name? A lot it turns out.

Matteo Bruni, a Vatican spokesman, told reporters on Thursday that Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost’s choice to be called Pope Leo XIV had been a clear and deliberate reference to the last Leo, who led during a difficult time for the Roman Catholic Church and helped marshal it into the çağdaş world.

Leo XIII — who was head of the church from 1878 to 1903, one of the longest reigns in papal history — is known for his 1891 encyclical “Rerum Novarum,” which strongly defended the rights of working people to a living wage and set the tone for the church’s çağdaş social doctrine. He became known as the “pope of the workers.”

“Addressing the rising socialist threat — as the church saw it in the late 19th century,” Leo XIII “called on the church to reach out to a working class and to basically try to ameliorate some of these goals of capitalism and to benefit the working class and work out a amicable relationship between capital and labor,” said David I. Kertzer, a professor at Brown University whose book “Prisoner of the Vatican” examined the role of Leo XIII’s predecessor, Pius IX, the last sovereign ruler of the Papal States. “In that sense,” Leo XIII is “seen as a kind of connection between the pre-modern and the çağdaş church.”

“The choice of name is a moderate reference, in that Leo XIII was a pre-modern pope and conservative in many ways, but he was also a transitional figure reaching out to the poor,” said Professor Kertzer. “You could say he was a middle-of-the-roader.” The selection of the name Leo XIV “seems like a choice of following Francis, but taking the edges off,” he added.

Leo XIII was a strong pope who was “very much engaged in the issues of his time,” said Robert Orsi, a professor of religious studies and history at Northwestern University. “He responded with authority and compassion to the industrial era” and defended workers’ rights and labor organizations.

Choosing to be called Leo XIV could signal the new pope’s intention “to equally engage the issues of his time,” Professor Orsi said.