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| | Mikhail S. Gorbachev + Leo XIII |
 | | This perhaps explains why, becoming pope in 1878, chiefly because he was not expected to live long (he was just shy of age 68), Leo had great difficulty reconciling the Church to the modern world. |
 | | Leo especially objected to things we take for granted today: free elections, secular public education, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of the press, separation of church and state, legal divorce and equality before the law. |
 | | Leo's other great encyclical, Rerum Novarum, was a tepid endorsement of a living wage for workers, with no specifics, that was repudiated by his successor, Pius XI, who endorsed the Fascist-Corporate State. |
| www.ronaldbrucemeyer.com /rants/0302almanac.htm (583 words) |
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