I’ve studied papal encyclicals for over 30 years, and Caritas in veritate (“Charity in Truth”) is the first one I was eager to be finished with. Clearly Pope Benedict XVI wants his message about “integral human development” in the context of global economics to be understood in continuity with Paul VI’s Populorum progressio (“On the Development of Peoples”) of 1967, a document considered the high-water mark of Catholic social radicalism.
President Obama met Pope Benedict XVI for the first time in a closed-door meeting at the Vatican that focused on the Catholic Church’s opposition to abortion but covered other topics as well.
The pope gave Obama a copy of his recent encyclical on the global economy, which calls for a redistribution of wealth, among other things. But Benedict also gave him reading material on Catholic bioethics teaching, which Benedict’s personal secretary said would help Obama “better understand” why the church’s positions are at odds with the U.S. president’s.