1. United States
2. Letter

As a fellow Ohioan and Roman Catholic, I write from our shared roots to urge you to apply Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum to today’s economic challenges. Its call to balance labor and capital, protect human dignity, and promote the common good remains urgently relevant. Rerum Novarum teaches that work is more than a commodity: it’s an expression of human dignity. You can champion: • Living wages and safe conditions: Insist that federal policy and regulatory agendas ensure every worker can support a family and return home healthy. • Freedom of association: Defend the right of employees to organize, bargain collectively, and have a genuine voice without fear of retaliation. • Subsidiarity: Empower families, local governments, faith‑based charities, and community groups to address needs before resorting to top‑down federal intervention. • Responsible property rights: Recognize private ownership as natural, but always exercised in light of social obligations—through incentives for investment in underserved regions, support for affordable housing, and encouragement of corporate philanthropy. • Structural reform plus charity: Pair voluntary aid with systematic improvements—expand workforce development programs, modernize labor standards (portable benefits, stronger safety enforcement), and invest in areas left behind by globalization and automation. By grounding tax, housing, labor, and investment policies in these principles, your administration can forge an economy where every American—regardless of background—shares in prosperity. Rerum Novarum’s century‑old insights are not relics but practical guides: dignify labor, respect enterprise, and safeguard the common good. Let them steer your public advocacy and policymaking so that Ohioans and all Americans can flourish together.