By Pope Leo XIII | Compiled and Introduced by Leo L. Clarke

The reign of Pope Leo XIII is the fourth-longest of any papacy in the two-thousand-year history of the Catholic Church. Over the course of a full quarter-century, Leo XIII courageously engaged with the modern world, asserting the Church’s authority and wisdom in the face of unprecedented challenges and confusion. He was also a prolific author, issuing a total of eighty-six encyclical letters on matters both spiritual and social. Compiled and engagingly introduced by Leo L. Clarke, The Great Encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII comprises—across two volumes—thirty-one of those letters, to present the vibrant and courageous insights of this great shepherd to an age with a pronounced need of hearing and heeding his message.

Volume One: The Social Letters contains fourteen of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclicals dedicated to expounding upon and explaining the principles which govern the life of Catholics in civil society, including his first, Inscrutabili dei consilio (on the evils of society); the forthright Longinqua (on Catholicism in the United States); and the most famous, Rerum novarum (on capital and labor).

Can it be true that civilization can bear no fruit in a society that lives by the spirit of Jesus Christ? Can man develop physically, socially and politically only upon condition of his repudiating the Catholic Church? That is the great and crucial question… (Pope Leo XIII)

Pope Leo XIII (1810–1903) served as Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church from 1878 until his death in 1903. His papacy enacted a grand program of renovation and expansion of the Catholic Church, firmly grounded in her “holy and venerable authority.”

Leo L. Clarke spent his professional career as a lawyer, law professor, and business exec­utive. His scholarship has centered on cyberlaw, law and economics, and Catholic social teaching; the last exemplified in his book, Man and the Economy (Cluny, 2018). 

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Paperback: 300pp.

ISBN: 978-1685953683