June 2nd, 2025: President's Message

I’m pleased in many ways to know that the leadership of the worldwide Catholic Church is now in the hands of Pope Leo XIV, formerly Robert Prevost of Chicago, a man of many heritages, who speaks multiple languages, and is still known to many as Father Bob. I am pleased as an American Catholic and as a leader in the American labor movement. 

The choice of Leo as his papal name immediately struck a deep chord with me, bringing up memories going all the way back to the late 1980’s, when, as a worker at the Hotel Syracuse I went on strike along with my coworkers. We spent 129 days on a picket line. That gives you a lot of time to think about and learn a lot of things. One of the things we learned was about the last Pope Leo, Leo XIII, who wrote the Encyclical Rerum Novarum: On Capital and Labor, outlining the church’s social justice tradition and insisting that the treatment of workers is a moral issue for society to confront.

We took comfort and strength from those words, which turned into action when many religious leaders came out to support the just demands of workers at the hotel.

In the 1990’s, Labor and Religion came together again at a picket line in front of the Landis Plastics factory in Solvay, where workers were losing fingers in the machines and where women workers in particular suffered indignities every day they went to work. The United Steelworkers led the charge and organized labor rallied with our religious allies. Local figures such as Bishop Thomas Costello and Rabbi Daniel Jezer walked into the plant unannounced to confront management about their refusal to listen to their workers.

So – is it too much to hope that in these dark days for workers and the poor, that this new Leo will also be a voice for the oppressed? I have no doubt that his choice of that name was meant to remind all of us in organized labor that we have allies among the clergy.

Make no mistake – these are terrible times for workers. The worship of wealth and the abandonment of the poor and the working class have brought our society to a turning point. I know which side I will always stand on. Whether it’s on a picket line or at a rally against cutting basic services,  I look at the crowd, I see the faces of working people giving their time and energy to make this world a better place.

I know that the struggles we are engaged in will be long and hard. There will be setbacks.

But in the quiet peaceful face of a priest from Chicago, I see his predecessor, Leo XIII.  I think back to the struggles in the time of Rerum Novarum, when unions had no power and workers were treated in ways we can’t imagine today. This should give us all strength.

It is nice to have a Pope steeped in that tradition at my back, with an entire community that understands and supports our struggle.