Pope Leo holds up Argentine businessman as a model of lay holiness
Pope Leo XIV cited Argentine businessman Enrique Shaw as an example of how business can become a path to holiness when guided by the Gospel and Catholic social teaching. Speaking to business leaders, workers, unions and social movements in Buenos Aires, the pope said Shaw saw industry as a community of people called to grow together. Shaw, a father of nine and supporter of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, urged Christian business leaders to sanctify themselves through their professions and help build a better world. Shaw’s granddaughter said his life and mission were profoundly shaped by Catholic social teaching, including the tradition associated with Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical “Rerum Novarum.”.
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Pope Leo XIV presented Argentine businessman Enrique Shaw as an example of how Catholic faith and social teaching can shape business and everyday working life. Speaking in Buenos Aires, he praised Shaw’s view of a company as a community of people and highlighted his efforts to protect workers; Shaw’s cause for beatification has advanced following recognition of a miracle attributed to his intercession.
Leo spoke about Shaw on Nov. 9 at a gathering of business leaders, trade unionists, workers and social-movement representatives at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, which Shaw had helped establish. The pope said Shaw’s conversion through the Church’s social doctrine led him to see industry not merely as a mechanism for production or capital accumulation, but as a community in which people could grow together.
Leo also recalled Shaw’s call to form Christian business leaders who would contribute to a better world through their work, seeking to “sanctify ourselves through our profession and to sanctify the profession.” The pope had previously cited Shaw in a 2025 message, saying his life showed that economic efficiency and fidelity to the Gospel could go together.
Born in Paris in 1921 to Argentine parents, Shaw entered Argentina’s naval academy as a teenager and later discerned that his vocation was to marry, raise a family and evangelize through business. He married Cecilia Bunge in 1943; they had nine children. After leaving the Navy, he became managing director of Rigolleau, a glass company employing thousands.
Shaw helped found the Christian Association of Business Executives in 1952 and was active in Argentine Catholic Action. He also participated in establishing the Catholic University of Argentina and Caritas Argentina. At Rigolleau, he promoted health care and financial assistance for employees and their families.
During a severe economic crisis in 1961, the company’s majority shareholders, U.S.-based Corning Glass Works, ordered the dismissal of about 1,200 workers. Despite terminal cancer, Shaw traveled to the United States and persuaded the executives to reverse the planned layoffs, using his personal credit and proposing that workers be assigned to facility maintenance.
Shaw’s granddaughter, María Elena Critto, said he put Catholic social teaching into practice by recognizing the human dignity of workers and considering how business decisions affected employees, their families, suppliers, customers, competitors and the wider community. She described his example as a call to live faith consistently across work, family and religious life, rather than separating professional conduct from Catholic commitment.
Shaw died of cancer in Buenos Aires in 1962, aged 41. During his illness, more than 200 Rigolleau employees volunteered to donate blood for his transfusions. Pope Francis declared him venerable in 2021, and in December 2025 Pope Leo authorized a decree recognizing a miracle attributed to Shaw’s intercession, clearing the way for beatification.
Business as a vocation to holiness and social responsibility
In Catholic social teaching, business is not merely a way to earn a living or generate profit. It can be a genuine human and Christian vocation: a way to serve others, develop human gifts, create useful goods and work, and contribute to the common good. That vocation is not fulfilled by good intentions or a public commitment to “social responsibility” alone. It must take shape in just, truthful, and humane decisions throughout the life of an organization.
The Church’s reflection on business leadership describes the businessperson’s vocation as “a genuine human and Christian calling.” Its purpose includes developing goods and services for customers and communities, while respecting truth, human dignity, freedom, creativity, fidelity to commitments, and the principle that the goods of creation are meant for everyone.
Calling business a vocation means that it can be a place to respond to God through ordinary professional responsibilities. The Christian business leader is not asked to set faith aside at work, nor to treat business as a merely private arena where only financial outcomes matter. Rather, faith widens the horizon of decision-making: the leader’s interests are not the only interests that count, and business can become a way of cooperating responsibly in the work of creation.
This does not mean that every business decision is easy, or that business activity is automatically holy. The vocation has to be lived faithfully. The Church’s reflection acknowledges that business can bring innovation and prosperity, but also scandal, inequality, ecological harm, and a loss of trust. The scale of business’s influence therefore brings serious moral responsibility.
Profit matters: a business needs resources to continue operating, invest, and provide work. But profit alone does not define the purpose of business. The Church’s reflection presents a company as a community of people who work together to meet human needs and serve society.
That understanding asks business leaders to consider not only whether an enterprise is financially successful, but also what it produces, how it treats people, and what consequences its activity has for society and the natural environment. A business serves the common good when it creates goods that are genuinely beneficial, offers services that truly serve, organizes work so people can develop their abilities, and creates sustainable wealth that can be distributed justly.
This is a demanding idea of service. It does not reduce a company to a charitable organization, nor does it imply that commercial success is suspect. Rather, it asks that commercial activity be ordered toward human flourishing. The Church’s reflection identifies practical expressions of this responsibility: fair pricing, just compensation, humane job design, personal responsibility, innovation, responsible environmental practices, and socially responsible investment. It also applies moral discernment to hiring and firing, ownership, governance, training, supplier relationships, and leadership formation.
A business is not just an impersonal mechanism for producing returns. It is made up of people whose dignity must shape its policies and relationships. Calling it a “community of persons” means that employees, managers, owners, suppliers, and customers should not be treated merely as instruments for someone else’s advantage. The organization’s purpose and practices should recognize people as participants in shared work and in the life of society.
For leaders, this makes virtue practical. Wisdom and justice are not merely values to place in a mission statement; they must inform the policies and decisions that structure daily work. The Church’s reflection describes practical wisdom as establishing effective and just practices that foster right relationships and humanize the organization.
This is why social responsibility cannot be judged only by the language a company uses about its values. It must be tested in concrete decisions: whether work is organized humanely, whether compensation is just, whether suppliers are treated responsibly, and whether environmental consequences are taken seriously. The reflection warns that business ethics and corporate social responsibility can lose their proper direction if they contradict the Church’s social doctrine or disregard human dignity and moral norms. In that case, the language of responsibility can mask practices that undermine integral human development.
The call to holiness in business is therefore expressed through faithful action: making and providing goods that are truly good, organizing productive work in ways that help people develop their gifts, and seeking a just distribution of sustainable wealth. The reflection presents these as ways business leaders can serve others and contribute to creation rather than pursuing financial success as the sole measure of achievement.
It also insists that work needs the perspective of rest and worship. Sunday rest is not simply an interruption of productivity; it helps people see work in a wider context and renew attention to God, other people, and the world. The reflection specifically connects Sunday Eucharistic participation with concern for the poor and for nature, presenting worship as something that informs the working week rather than withdrawing from it.
For a Christian business leader, then, holiness is not measured only by charitable donations or personal piety separated from professional life. It involves asking whether the enterprise’s everyday choices respect human dignity, serve real needs, and contribute to the common good. The Church’s reflection encourages entrepreneurs, managers, and others in business to recognize their work as a vocation and to respond through discipleship, service, and fidelity to the Church’s social principles.