Rubio, Leo, and the future of the GOP

Rubio could be positioned to bring the pope's economic teachings back home to the U.S. - but will he do it?

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Two weeks ago, the first American pope stepped out on the loggia overlooking St. Peter’s Square, taking the name Leo XIV.

He would later explain that he chose that name largely out of a desire to take the principles laid out by the last Pope Leo in Rerum Novarum and examine how they apply in the world’s contemporary social and economic context.

Pope Leo XIV meets U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the apostolic palace May 19, 2025. Credit: Vatican Media

A few years earlier, another American also invoked Leo XIII, in a speech delivered in Washington, D.C., calling for the principles laid out in Rerum Novarum to be used as the foundation for a new way of approaching the American economy.

That man was Marco Rubio, who earlier this week, in his capacity as U.S. Secretary of State, met with the newly inaugurated Pope Leo XIV.

In his 2019 speech, delivered at the Catholic University of America’s Busch School of Business, Rubio warned that “[e]conomic stability for working-class families is not a feature of today’s economy.”

There are several factors causing this, Rubio said, but the end result is a sharp decline in the “availability of dignified work.”

As a solution, he proposed turning to the Catholic Church’s social teaching for guidance.

“The Church emphasizes the moral duty of employers to respect workers not just as means to profit, but as human persons and productive members of their community and nation. The tradition sees past our stale partisan categories and roots our politics in something larger: the inviolable dignity of every human person, the work he or she does, and the family life that work supports,” Rubio said.

In the weeks and months that followed, Rubio elaborated on these concepts, in a series of articles and interviews about what he termed “Common Good Capitalism.”

Key to Rubio’s concept of Common Good Capitalism was the idea that workers and businesses have both rights and obligations.

“[B]usinesses have a right to make a profit, but they also have an obligation to reinvest those profits productively for the benefit of the workers and the greater society,” he said. “Similarly, workers have a right to share in the benefits of the profits they helped create.”

Rubio called for a recognition “that what the market determines is most efficient may not be best for America.”

For example, he said, the free market does not necessarily recognize the societal benefit of parents who are engaged with their children. The government should step in to fill in the gap, through policies such as an expansion to the child tax credit and paid parental leave.

Rubio hailed the principles of Rerum Novarum as a desperately-needed “third way” between socialism and unregulated free markets.

His ideas sparked some initial interest. They were reported in Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. They garnered responses from political thinkers who both praised and critiqued the Florida senator’s proposals.

For a brief window of time at the end of 2019, it seemed that there might be some serious discussion about Catholic social thought and the American economy.

But then 2020 hit. The Covid pandemic brought the world to a screeching halt, and seized the nation’s collective political and economic attention.

The discussion of Common Good Capitalism largely fizzled out. With more pressing social concerns, it seemed that the moment for Rerum Novarum to be seriously considered on the U.S. political stage had passed.

But that may be about to change.

The election of a pope - the first American pope - who has chosen Leo as his papal name brings back into the spotlight questions of what the Church’s social teaching means for our society and economy today.

And that leaves Rubio in an interesting position, at an interesting time in U.S. history.

The Republican Party is on the verge of a major identity crisis: What will the GOP look like in a post-Trump era?

Since 2016, Donald Trump has reshaped the Republican Party in significant ways. Under his leadership, the party has proposed initiatives that not long ago would have been viewed as antithetical to Republican values - from taxpayer-funded IVF to price controls on prescription drugs.

But, barring an attempt to revisit the 22nd Amendment, Trump’s time as president is drawing to a close. And when his term ends, the GOP will need to decide what, exactly, its values are - both economically and socially. Will the party continue along the MAGA trajectory laid out by Trump over the last decade? Or will it return to its former stances and ideals?

The coming years will see a battle for the future of the Republican Party in the United States.

And amid that debate, Rubio could be positioned to bring the economic teachings of the first U.S. pope back home to the U.S.

But will he do it?

At the moment, the most significant obstacle to resurrecting his discussion of Rerum Novarum could be Rubio’s role in the Trump administration.

Despite his choice of a Catholic VP, the president has not given any indication that he is actually interested in factoring Catholic social teaching into his decision-making process, as evidenced by his run-ins with the bishops on issues such as immigration and his recent IVF proposal. And if Rubio wants to keep his job in the Trump administration, running afoul of the president is likely not a wise career move at this point.

A more likely — and more politically strategic — option would be for Rubio to bide his time until the 2028 presidential election.

Rubio is a strong contender for 2028.

Once an adamant opponent of Trump — whom he labeled a "con artist" who was hijacking American conservatism — Rubio eventually came to defend the president, but offered justifications for his policies that may be more appealing to a broader audience.

Rubio has the ability to appeal to both MAGA and non-MAGA Republicans, which will be essential for any candidate hoping to win an election in a post-Trump Republican Party.

He has also shown his ability to work across the aisle — he was part of the bipartisan Gang of Eight that worked on immigration reform back in 2013, and he has proposed solutions on problems such as health care costs and student loans — issues that Americans say they are concerned about, but which many Republican politicians seem content to ignore. This could help him reach moderate independents in a general election.

The biggest challenge for 2028 would be to pull together a platform that would satisfy all these different political factions at once. Rubio knows this as well as anyone.

Common Good Capitalism may not offer the broad appeal necessary to unite the Republican Party, and American voters more widely, in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s second term.

It’s possible, in fact, that rather than uniting different factions of voters, Rubio’s proposals of Common Good Capitalism could end up isolating people on every side. Neither free market champions nor advocates of increased government-run programs have been particularly enthusiastic about the idea of a “third way” such as that proposed by the Florida senator.

And when the Covid pandemic captured the nation’s attention in 2020, it shut down the debate that could have refined and fine-tuned Rubio’s positions into something amenable to broader swaths of the American public.

Turning Rerum Novarum into a platform that can unite Americans in 2028 would require convincing people from diverse ideological backgrounds to step outside of their political comfort zones and try something new.

In a political party — and a country — marred by polarization and animosity, the greatest challenge for any GOP candidate will be healing divisions and uniting warring factions in the years ahead.

It’s a daunting task. But it’s not one unique to America.

Pope Leo faces a similar task, as he takes leadership of a Church weary from division, wounded by strife and discord.

And in the nascent days of his papacy, Leo has made it clear that unity and healing will be themes he hopes to emphasize. That’s easier said than done, of course, and the pope will need to find ways to bring people together in the coming months and years.

In that sense, Rubio may be well-positioned now to watch Pope Leo’s attempts on that front, and to learn from him.

Rubio himself never entirely dropped the concept of Common Good Capitalism, although most of his attention has shifted elsewhere. The idea reappeared in his 2023 book, “Decades of Decadence.”

By all appearances, Rubio still wants to have a discussion about Common Good Capitalism. He now has an opportunity to be the standard-bearer for this discussion in a Leo XIV papacy, if he chooses to take it.

If Rubio is serious about working to shape the future of the Republican Party and the United States through the lens of Rerum Novarum, he may find in Pope Leo a model and ally.