Catholic Social Teaching
In 1891, Pope Leo XIII issued a papal bull entitled Rerum Novarum, which is considered the Catholic Church's first expression of a view supportive of a living wage. The Church recognized that wages should be sufficient to support a family. This position has been widely supported by the church since that time, and has been reaffirmed by the papacy on multiple occasions, such as by Pope Pius XII in 1931 Quadragesimo Anno and again in 1961, by Pope John XXIII writing in the encyclical Mater et Magistra. More recently, Pope John Paul II wrote:
- "Hence in every case a just wage is the concrete means of verifying the whole socioeconomic system and, in any case, of checking that it is functioning justly" - Laborem Exercens, 1981
Read more about this topic: Living Wage
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