León XIV held up Enrique Shaw as a model for the business world during his visit to Universidad Católica Argentina, saying the Argentine entrepreneur saw industry as a community of people, not just a place to make money. He also pointed to Shaw’s path toward beatification, placing him squarely in the Church’s public conversation today.
That matters because Shaw is not being presented only as a successful businessman. León XIV tied his life to Doctrina Social de la Iglesia and said the future beato understood that productive activity had to include the growth of everyone inside the company. In the pope’s telling, the business world is not merely a machine for capital accumulation, but a human community meant to advance together.
Shaw’s profile helps explain why that message lands with force. He was an entrepreneur, sailor, husband and father of nine children, born in 1921 at Hotel Ritz de París. He also helped found Universidad Católica Argentina, and León XIV singled out that connection as part of why his memory still carries weight there. Shaw had no clerical or religious order background; he lived as a layman inside the world he was trying to change.
His public witness was not cost-free. In 1955, Shaw was detained for his religious commitment and for making his faith visible. That part of his story sits uneasily beside the polished image of an executive figure, but it is also what gives the pope’s praise its edge: Shaw is being offered not as a church insider, but as a businessman who treated work, justice and faith as one moral field.
León XIV also said the task now is to form Christian entrepreneurs and give them a way of life. Quoting Shaw, he said a business leader should help build a better world through action in his or her own sphere, and that this is a mission of religion and life. The beatification process advanced in 2025 after favorable evaluations of a miracle attributed to Shaw’s intercession, after Francis declared him venerable in April 2021. What remains unresolved in public detail is the miracle itself; what is clear is that Shaw is moving from admired example to possible saint, and the Church is asking businessmen to see in him not a mascot for success, but a standard for conscience.
