While the Vatican press office offered a brief explanation for why Cardinal Robert Prevost had chosen to be called Leo XIV, the Pope himself gave further details in his first meeting with the cardinals
"There are different reasons for [choosing to take the name Leo], but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.
In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labour.
To understand more about this, and more about Rerum Novarum, see article below:
And to read the Pope's full address to the cardinals, see below:
