Americans vote in the midterm elections on Tuesday, November 3, nine days from now. Several U.S. bishops have spoken up this fall about voting rights, and on October 14 USCCB president Archbishop Paul Coakley called voting “both a right and a responsibility.” But Pope Leo XIV had already asked the harder question back in April, in a message to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, whose plenary theme was “The Uses of Power: Legitimacy, Democracy and the Rewriting of the International Order.” Democracy, he wrote, is not just a matter of counting votes. Cut loose from the moral law, it can turn into something else entirely.
This understanding of legitimate power finds one of its highest expressions in authentic democracy. Far from being a mere procedure, this type of democracy recognizes the dignity of every person and calls each citizen to participate responsibly in the pursuit of the common good. Reflecting this conviction, Saint John Paul II affirmed that the Church values democracy because it ensures participation in political choices and “the possibility both of electing and holding accountable those who govern them, and of replacing them through peaceful means when appropriate” (Centesimus Annus, 46). Democracy remains healthy, however, only when rooted in the moral law and a true vision of the human person. Lacking this foundation, it risks becoming either a majoritarian tyranny or a mask for the dominance of economic and technological elites.
— Pope Leo XIV, Message to Participants in the Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, April 9, 2026
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