American author, speaker and theologian Bishop Robert Barron was at the Vatican this week to witness the election of a new pope, and he shared his thoughts with Fox News Digital about Cardinal Robert Prevost’s “intriguing” new papal name.<\/p>\n
Papal names are often very symbolic with regard to how a Pope will serve as the leader of the Catholic Church.<\/a> Typically, Pope’s select the names of predecessors they admire or want to emulate. Prevost ultimately went with Leo XIV<\/a> in honor of Pope Leo XIII, who served from 1878 to 1903.<\/p>\n “He could have been Francis II, and we would have said, \u2018Oh, there he is clearly in the line of Francis.\u2019 He could have been John Paul III, then we would have thought, \u2018Oh, he\u2019s very much in that more conservative line.’ He could have been John XXIV, and we say \u2018Oh, now he\u2019s a real revolutionary liberal, et cetera,'” Barron said. “The fact that he went back, well over 100 years, to this very interesting and pivotal figure \u2026 our new pope was saying, I too, want a critical engagement with the modern world, not simply a \u2018no,\u2019 but also not simply a \u2018yes,\u2019 not simply an acquiescence to it.”<\/p>\n CARDINAL DOLAN DESCRIBES POPE XIV AS \u2018CITIZEN OF THE WORLD,\u2019 WILL BUILD BRIDGES WITH TRUMP<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Barron pointed out that Leo XIII was a pivotal figure due to the timing of his reign, which came during a moment when the Church<\/a> was contending with the tremendous political and philosophical upheavals of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as the French and American Revolutions, and the introduction of philosophies such as Marxism.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n “The church’s first reaction [to these changes] was very negative. It was a great \u2018no\u2019 to modernity. By the end of the 19th century, I think, with a certain distance and a certain critical intelligence, the church was willing to enter into a more, call it, creative engagement with modernity. And I think Pope Leo the 13th represents precisely that,” Barron said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The bishop pointed to the Rerum Novarum to further his point, an encyclical letter issued by Pope Leo XII in 1891.<\/p>\n BEARS STAR CALEB WILLIAMS ISSUES TWO-WORDED REACTION TO POPE LEO XIV’S ELECTION<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n “In that document, [Leo XII] is a fierce opponent of Marxism, a fierce opponent of socialism and communism, a great defender of private property and of the market economy,” Barron said. “So you say, ‘Okay, there’s that great \u2018no\u2019 to the left-wing economic revolutions.’ At the same time, in that same letter, [Leo XII] comes out strongly in favor of the right to form unions.<\/a> He comes out very strongly in favor of what we call the universal destination of goods.”<\/p>\n “In fact, Pope Leo says in that letter, once the requirements of necessity and propriety have been met in your life, the rest of what you own belongs to the poor,” Barron continued. “That’s not a just a standard, boring, mainstream point of view. That’s a pretty revolutionary statement. But notice the lovely balance in that letter between \u2018yes\u2019 to private property, the great \u2018no\u2019 to socialism and Marxism, but the great \u2018yes\u2019 to the universal destination of goods. Leo sets the tone thereby for the rest of Catholic social teaching<\/a> that followed him.”<\/p>\n In conclusion, Barron said he thinks Prevost’s selection of Leo XIV makes the new pope “a very interesting player” in terms of the debate between the Right and the Left in politics.\u00a0<\/p>\n CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP<\/u><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n “[Leo XVI] doesn’t fit \u2013 and I’ve said this 1,000 times \u2013 he and other great representatives of Catholic social teaching don’t fit into our categories of left and right,” Barron said. “They don’t fit into Democrat-Republican, they’re in a space beyond those distinctions. So, I think that’s what’s perhaps most interesting about him.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" American author, speaker and theologian Bishop Robert Barron was at the Vatican this week to witness the election of a new pope, and he shared his thoughts with Fox News Digital about Cardinal Robert Prevost’s “intriguing” new papal name. Papal names are often very symbolic with regard to how a Pope will serve as the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}