Pope Leo XIV asserts, in article 13 of the “Building the Common Good” section of the introduction to his Magnifica Humanitas encyclical, that “building a world in which everyone can flourish requires shared responsibility and courage. No one can single-handedly bear the weight of the challenges the world is facing, just as no one is so weak that they cannot play their part, for `power is made perfect in weakness’ (2 Cor 12:9).” Every person has their role to play, he specifies, including “scientists and researchers, entrepreneurs and workers, educators and legislators, civil society, popular movements and faith communities...”
Vatican News announced today that, inspired by Article 13, they are inviting voices that do not necessarily belong to, or are not closely associated with, the Catholic Church to contribute their reflections on the “many dimensions of human existence” raised by the Pope in the encyclical.
Maurizio Martina, the Deputy Director-General of the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), contributed the first such commentary, under the headline “Rebuilding the Grammar of `We’. Martina reflects on the central issues addressed by the Pope: the “rehabilitation of war as an instrument of international politics” which is leading the world to a state of “permanent belligerence;” the moral crisis shown in the inseparably-linked issues of war, poverty and hunger, in which migrants, refugees and displaced persons stand witness to the failure of the system; and climate change, AI and the Pope’s “appeal to free technological development from the exclusive logic of competition and domination, restoring it to the sphere of shared responsibility where it can be directed toward the common good.”
