At the Élysée Palace in Paris on September 25, Pope Leo XIV praised advances associated with the Enlightenment and said the French motto “liberty, equality and fraternity” expresses “universal ethical imperatives” that find inspiration and fulfillment in the Gospel. Frank Wright argues this represents a fundamental departure from older Catholic condemnations of revolutionary liberalism.
Wright contrasts Leo’s remarks with Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors and Leo XIII’s social teaching, both of which condemned the principles that drove the French Revolution. He invokes the dechristianization of revolutionary France: churches converted into Temples of Reason, altars replaced by revolutionary inscriptions. That is the revolution Leo is now praising.
