Pope Leo XIII was concerned with issues of liberty and political power. He was sympathetic to the plight of the workers and felt that the Church should recognize their concerns, though he did not believe in the inevitable clash of labor and capital.
Thus in Rerum novarum he wrote that it was a “great mistake” to believe that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the workingmen are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict…. Each needs the other: Capital cannot do without Labor, nor Labor without Capital… .