2027 EXHIBIT
Léon Harmel
The Pioneer of Catholic Social Doctrine
In his first speech after being elected, Pope Leo XIV forcefully reaffirmed the relevance of Catholic social teaching in today’s world: “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 treasure 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.”
This “treasure” does not consist only of written documents, but also of the experiences of the Catholic workers and entrepreneurs who put them into practice. By living the teaching in their own work, they witnessed the power of the Christian faith to transform also the economic sphere. One of the first and greatest Catholic entrepreneurs was Léon Harmel in France in the 19th century. This exhibit tells his story and how it helped shape the Church’s social teaching at its inception.
