Pope Issues Encyclical On Globalization and Econmic Development

Yesterday, on the eve of the G-8 economic summit in Italy, Pope Benedict XVI issued his third encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth). The document includes extensive discussion of issues relating to global economic development. The Vatican also issued a summary synthesizing the highlights of the longer document. Describing the wide-ranging document, the New York Times observed: "In many ways, the document is a puzzling cross between an anti-globalization tract and a government white paper, another signal that the Vatican does not comfortably fit into traditional political categories of right and left." Here is one excerpt from the encyclical that has garnered a good deal of press attention:

In the face of the unrelenting growth of global interdependence, there is a strongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth. One also senses the urgent need to find innovative ways of implementing the principle of the responsibility to protect and of giving poorer nations an effective voice in shared decision-making....

To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority....

Obviously it would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties, and also with the coordinated measures adopted in various international forums. Without this ... international law would risk being conditioned by the balance of power among the strongest nations. The integral development of peoples and international cooperation require the establishment of a greater degree of international ordering.... They also require the construction of a social order that at last conforms to ... the interconnection between moral and social spheres, and to the link between politics and the economic and civil spheres, as envisaged by the Charter of the United Nations.