Pope Leo XIII wrote to the Bishops of the Catholic Church in 1891 on Capital and Labour. His encyclical was called Rerum Novarum. This was at a time when Europe was becoming industrialized and people were moving from the land to the towns. It was also a time when the Jew, Karl Marx [ 1818 - 1883 ] was influencing socialists through his most famous work, Das Kapital. Leo takes a position on the despoilation of the working man that covers the rapacity of the tax man as well as the greed of the capitalist swine. Gordon Brown, Her Majesty's Prime Minister and, allegedly a Christian manages to claim that he is being prudent without a blush, while taking 80% of our earnings.
G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc turned Leo's view into practical politics as Distributism, which aims to spread ownership far wider than capitalism. The Pope also writes about the Socialists abusing the working man's despair by making false promises. Let Leo to be heard. Pope Pius followed up with Quadragesimo Anno forty years later to make the point about treating people decently.