The first of the Catholic Church’s social encyclicals, Rerum novarum (The Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor) was issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. The document is a response to the early Industrial Revolution and its effects on the inhumane treatment of the working poor, and the looming threat of Marxist revolution. Leo rejects Marxism for a non-violent social reform to insure worker’s rights based on the dignity of the worker and his share in the economic and social progress of the modern industrialized world. Rerun novarum lays …