Pope Leo XIV explains his choice of name

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Source: Vativan Media

In a brief video on the Vatican X site, Pope Leo XIV explains his choice of name today. He said:

"... I chose to take the name Leo XIV. There are different reasons for this, but 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."

The first Pope Leo, whose papacy was from 440 to 461 is particularly famous for meeting with Attila the Hun and dissuading him from attacking Rome.

Leo I is also known as "a great intellectual and theological reformer," He wrote 'Leo's Tome' a document that influenced the official doctrine defining Jesus Christ as both fully human and fully divine.

Commentators have pointed out that the Pope's name could also be a reference to Brother Leo, a 13th-century friar who was a great companion of St Francis of Assisi.