With two consecutive popes from the Americas and one year into a new Leonine pontificate, this symposium will explore the reception, contestation, and reinterpretation of modern Catholic social teaching on the American continents over the last two centuries.
Both Pope Francis and Pope Leo have called our change of epoch a “polycrisis”: a convergence of social, political, technological, and environmental crises threatening both humanity and the planet. For the modern popes, the domination of capital over labor has diminished the dignity of the worker and the recognition of land as a gift rather than a commodity.
Over the course of three days, this symposium at Notre Dame Rome will provide a cross-disciplinary platform for reconsidering Catholic views on work as “the essential key to the social question” and on “sharing in the land” by workers as a path to greater societal unity. What impact has such teaching had in the American Anthropocene? What impact should it have on the Church and world? Is there a different story of modern Catholic social teaching to be told from the American Anthropocene? These questions now extend to contemporary concerns about artificial intelligence and its implications for automation, energy, and the future of work.
Through research presentations and roundtable discussions, participants will seek to generate a renewed conversation in theological ethics that draws on historical research more carefully and to promote a new historiography that engages the complex normative commitments of religious actors more accurately. By discussing historical examples alongside current theological and political debates, the symposium will highlight contributions that scholars of modern Catholicism can make to a wider conversation about the toll taken by economic liberalism on the environment and working class communities, from Indigenous campesinos to “back row America.”
Public book talk
On Thursday, June 4, at 3:00 p.m. Rome time (9:00 a.m. Eastern), the symposium will feature a talk by Gerard O’Connell and Elisabetta Piqué on their recent co-authored book, The Election of Pope Leo XIV: The Last Surprise of Pope Francis (Orbis Books, 2026). The session is free and open to all, but registration is required both for in-person attendees and livestream viewers. Learn more and register for the book talk here.
Symposium speakers
Stephen Andes, Bushnell University
William T. Cavanaugh, DePaul University
David Cloutier, University of Notre Dame
Ricardo Cubas Ramacciotti, Universidad de los Andes
Liam de los Reyes, Mount Angel Seminary
Christine Firer Hinze, Fordham University
Nichole Flores, University of Virginia
Brad Gregory, University of Notre Dame
Elisabeth Kincaid, Baylor University
Jaime Pensado, University of Notre Dame
Sarah Shortall, University of Notre Dame
Paolo Valvo, Università Cattolica di Milano
Matthew Whelan, Duke Divinity School
Conveners
David Lantigua, University of Notre Dame
Susanna De Stradis, Mississippi State University
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