Vatican City - As white smoke rose from the Sistine Chapel on Thursday, the US-American Robert F. Prevost (69) became the new Pope Leo XIV . But why did the newly elected head of the Catholic Church choose the name "Leo" of all things?

On the one hand, the new pope is the successor to his deceased predecessor Pope Francis (†88). On the other hand, by choosing his name he is also following in the footsteps of Leo XIII, who was pope from 1887 to 1903.

"There are various reasons, but first and foremost because Pope Leo XIII addressed the social question in connection with the first great industrial revolution with the famous encyclical Rerum novarum," said Pope Leo XIV in his first speech to the College of Cardinals on Saturday.

In that encyclical, published in 1981, Leo XIII took a stand on the relationship between employers and employees and rejected socialist ideas of redistribution. He also went down in the history books as a "political pope" because of this document.

Like his named predecessor, Pope Leo XIV once again sees himself at the head of the Church in times of a new industrial revolution. While society and the economy were revolutionized between the 18th and 19th centuries due to new possibilities of mass production, today it is above all the advances in artificial intelligence (AI) to which the Church must provide a suitable response.

"And today the Church offers everyone the treasure of her social doctrine to respond to another industrial revolution and to the developments of artificial intelligence, which bring new challenges in the defense of human dignity, justice and work," the new Pope said.