Church in the World

Benedict’s new encyclical to outline vision for global development

POPE BENEDICT XVI is to call for a new world body to govern globalisation in his forthcoming encyclical. He urges the control of globalisation through rules that follow the "principles of subsidiarity and solidarity", according to a recent report in an Italian newspaper. The encyclical is to be released on Tuesday.

Corriere della Sera last Saturday printed what appeared to be excerpts from the document, which it said was a theological and theoretical look at the "vast subject of the economy and work". The Pope says globalisation is not an evil, but insists that it should be governed by "new rules" set down and safeguarded by an international political entity.

This week the Pope revealed that his third encyclical would re-examine the "social issues" Pope Paul VI tackled some 42 years ago with his own landmark encyclical on development, Populorum Progressio. "It intends to deepen some of the aspects of integral development in our times, in light of love in truth," he told pilgrims gathered on Monday in St Peter's Square for the patronal feast of Rome.

Caritas in Veritate ("Love in Truth"), as the new document is entitled, will bear the symbolic date of 29 June in memory of the Feast of Sts Peter and Paul. But the Vatican announced on Wednesday that the text, which has met a series of delays, will be unveiled next week. According to Corriere della Sera, the new encyclical begins: "Love in Truth, which Jesus Christ demonstrated to us throughout his entire earthly life and, above all, by his death and resurrection, is the principal resource at the service of the true development of every individual and all of humanity."

It encourages "integral human development inspired by values of love in truth", which the Pope says first of all requires individual change and responsibility. But he also says: "... love in truth demands urgent reforms in order to face with courage and without delay the great problems of injustice in the development of peoples." Among these is the need for labour unions to create a "new synergy" at the international level in order to face "the reduction of the social security net".
Pope Benedict calls for "a new and exhaustive reflection on the meaning of the economy and its ends, as well as a profound and far-sighted revaluation of the model of development". He says the economy needs a "common code of ethics" based on the "truth ... of faith and reason". He says the "duties we have towards the environment are connected to our duties towards the person" because "the primary capital to safeguard and value is the person in his integrity".
He strongly defends the 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, that outlawed the use of contraception for Catholics, arguing that "openness to life is at the centre of true development" because "if we lose personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of a new life, all other forms of acceptance that are useful to social life wither".

The Pope says that without love of and trust in the truth "there is no social conscience or responsibility and social action falls prey to private interests and the logic of power". This, he says, has "disintegrating effects on society" especially in "the process of globalisation in difficult moments like the present time".