In the Encyclical Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII not only condemns the socialistic «solution» abolishing all kind and manner of private property, but logically reasons out the inevitability of the political and economic failure of all future communist regimes. Expounding the Pope's reasoning, the article tends to show how the actual functioning of planified socialist economies has confirmed his forecast. While the social doctrine of the Church as expressed in the words of Leo XIII unequivocally condemns the systems of full-scale state property, it nevertheless acknowledges the role of the State in economic matters, especially in fixing the rules which govern the market economy.
