Ecumenical News International (Geneva)
Luigi Sandri
7 July 2009
Rome — Poorer nations should have an "effective voice in shared decision making" about the global economy, Pope Benedict XVI has said in his latest encyclical, released on the eve of a meeting in Italy of the leaders of the Group of Eight industrialised nations.
"This seems necessary in order to arrive at a political, juridical and economic order, which can increase and give direction to international cooperation for the development of all peoples in solidarity," the pontiff said in his encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate" (Charity in Truth), published on 7 July.
The encyclical makes no explicit mention of the G8 Summit, which begins on 8 July 100 kilometres (about 60 miles) from Rome in L'Aquila. This is the city badly damaged in April 2009 by an earthquake in which 300 people died.
Italian media reported that the Vatican's decision to publish the encyclical the day before the G8 meeting is due to begin was intended as a signal to world leaders to take moral and spiritual dimensions into account in their economic and political decision making.
On 7 July, Pope Benedict met Japan's Prime Minister Taro Aso, who is a Catholic, and unconfirmed reports suggested he will meet U.S. President Barack Obama at the end of the three-day G8 meeting.
Speaking to journalists in Rome, Cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said that the latest papal document had been intended to mark the 40th anniversary of the publication in 1967 of the encyclical, "Populorum progressio" (The development of peoples) by Pope Paul VI. This papal pronouncement said that the economy of the world must serve the whole of humanity and not just a few.
Martino told journalists that the complexity of the issues being dealt with had delayed publication of the new encyclical for two years.
In this time of globalisation, Pope Benedict says in his latest encyclical, and using a phrase from "Populorum progressio", "The peoples in hunger are making a dramatic appeal to the peoples blessed with abundance".
Pope Benedict writes that without a belief in God, authentic development is impossible, since "Man is not a lost atom in a random universe: he is God's creature, whom God chose to endow with an immortal soul, and whom he has always loved."
In the current social and cultural context, Benedict adds, "Practising charity in truth helps people to understand that adhering to the values of Christianity is not merely useful but essential for building a good society, and for true integral human development".
The Pope further states, "The Christian religion and other religions can offer their contribution to development only if God has a place in the public realm, specifically in regard to its cultural, social, economic, and particularly its political dimensions".
Pope Leo XIII wrote the first papal encyclical on social problems, "Rerum novarum" (Of New Things), in 1891. Since then, each pontiff has published at least one encyclical on social teaching.
- Text of "Caritas in Veritate" in pdf format:
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