Antipope Leo XIV’s Economic Message: Naturalism Masquerading as Catholic Social Doctrine
VaticanNews portal reports on November 13, 2025, that antipope Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) addressed Argentina’s Industrial Conference, urging business leaders to place “human dignity and the common good at the heart of economic life” while invoking Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum. The message promotes economic justice framed in purely naturalistic terms, conspicuously avoiding any reference to the Social Kingship of Christ or the necessity of Catholic confessional states.
Theological Abdication Disguised as Social Concern
The message’s core error lies in its reduction of Catholic social teaching to humanitarian economics. While Rerum Novarum indeed denounced worker exploitation, it did so within the uncompromising framework of regnum Christi (the reign of Christ) over all societies. Pius XI’s encyclical Quas Primas (1925) explicitly taught that “nations will be happy” only when “both public and private life are inspired by the precepts of Christ’s Gospel,” adding that civil rulers must “give public honor and obedience to Christ” for their authority to remain inviolate (¶19-21). The antipope’s silence on this sine qua non reduces Catholic social doctrine to secular NGO rhetoric.
Canonical Fraud Regarding “Venerable” Enrique Shaw
The portal’s uncritical promotion of Enrique Shaw’s cause exemplifies post-conciliar canonization abuses. Shaw died in 1962 – squarely within the modernist eclipse period – and his “veneration” was advanced by antipope Francis in 2021. True Catholic practice requires miracles verified before beatification (1917 CIC can. 2101), yet Shaw bypassed this through the novel “heroic virtue” path created by Paul VI. More damningly, Shaw’s purported “saintly” business practices directly contradict Pius XI’s condemnation in Quadragesimo Anno (1931) of attempts to “compose somehow matters for dispute between the Church and civil society” (¶41). A businessman pursuing “profitability” – however moderated – cannot be saintly when operating within usurious economic systems condemned by Benedict XIV’s Vix Pervenit (1745).
The Heresy of Dualism in Economic Life
Antipope Leo XIV’s claim that “economic efficiency and fidelity to the Gospel are not opposed” constitutes theological dualism. Christ warned: “No man can serve two masters… You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24). The Council of Trent anathematized those claiming “man’s free will… can cooperate with God’s grace” (Session VI, Canon IV) – a condemnation applicable to this attempt to “balance” capitalism with Christian charity. The article’s praise for “innovative, competitive” industry ignores Pius XI’s teaching that economic competition causes “the gravest evils” by reducing workers to commodities (Quadragesimo Anno ¶47).
Omission of Catholic Economic Non-Negotiables
Nowhere does the antipope mention:
- The condemnation of usury as mortal sin (Fifth Lateran Council, 1515)
- The necessity of guilds to protect workers (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum ¶49)
- The prohibition of women in factories (Pius XI, Casti Connubii ¶75)
- The duty to prefer Catholic workers (Holy Office, 1890)
Instead, the message promotes the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals under the guise of “care for creation” – a concept absent from pre-1958 magisterium. Pius XII explicitly condemned such globalist agendas in his 1952 Christmas Message, warning against “attempts to establish a world republic of lay character.”
Naturalism Replaces Supernatural Order
The repeated invocation of “human dignity” divorced from sanctifying grace exposes the modernist heresy. True dignity comes only through membership in Christ’s Mystical Body, as Pius XII taught in Mystici Corporis (1943): “Only those are really to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith” (¶22). The antipope’s message implicitly endorses Vatican II’s false ecumenism by suggesting dignity exists independently of Catholic baptism – a heresy condemned by Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors (1864), which rejected the notion that “good hope may be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not in the true Church of Christ” (Proposition 17).
Conclusion: Economic Modernism as Apostasy
This message continues the conciliar sect’s 60-year project to replace Catholic social doctrine with Marxist-inspired liberation theology. As St. Pius X warned in Pascendi (1907), modernists reduce religion to “a certain experience joined to a need of the divine” (¶14) – precisely what occurs when an antipope speaks of “holiness flourishing where decisions affect families” while omitting the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as society’s foundational act. True Catholic social teaching remains immutable: “There can be no true democracy… without Christ and the Church” (Pius XII, Radio Message, 1944). All else is apostasy.
Source:
Pope Leo: The economy must serve the common good (vaticannews.va)
Date: 13.11.2025