In a front page article in L'Osservatore Romano, Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti wrote that in 1891, Pope Leo "turned the maternal gaze of the Church" to the labour question.

This was during the transition away from an agricultural society during the industrial revolution.

We now live in a similarly crucial time of transition, Cardinal Bassetti continued.

This is one predicted by Fr Romano Guardini in The End of the Modern World, in which a "non-human man" claims limitless dominance over nature and an "economic, technical, organisational state" asserts limitless power over humanity and creation.

The most important challenge of Laudato Si', then, is the challenge to the "ungovernable power" of the "techno-economic paradigm".

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