Populorum Progressio
Paul VI's encyclical on the development of peoples: integral human development of the whole person and of every person, the social limits of property, the dangers of unbridled liberalism and of revolution, and solidarity between rich and poor nations.
Background and Occasion
By the mid-1960s, decolonisation had created dozens of new nations in Africa and Asia, most of them poor. The gap between rich and poor nations was widening, and development had become a central political question. Paul VI had seen this poverty at first hand: as Archbishop of Milan he had visited Latin America and Africa, and as Pope he travelled to the Holy Land and to India (1964). Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes had called for international efforts on behalf of the poor, and in January 1967 Paul VI established the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace to carry them forward.
Populorum Progressio, published on Easter Sunday 1967, was the first encyclical devoted entirely to the problem of development. Earlier social teaching from Rerum Novarum onward had concerned mainly the relations between workers and employers within industrial nations. Paul VI extended its principles to the world as a whole: the social question, he says, has become worldwide.
Structure
After an introduction, the encyclical has two parts: For man’s complete development; and The development of the human race in the spirit of solidarity. An appeal concludes it.
Central Teaching
Integral development
The heart of the encyclical is its account of integral human development. Development cannot be reduced to economic growth: to be authentic it must promote the good of every person and of the whole person. Each human being is called to fulfil himself, and this is a duty as well as a right; development is the growth of the person toward being more, not merely having more. Its highest form is openness to God, and so the encyclical speaks of a transcendent humanism, in which the person is fulfilled by union with Christ. A humanism closed to God, Paul VI warns, can organise the world but ends by turning it against man.
Property and the universal destination of goods
The Pope restates the principle that God intended the earth and all it contains for the use of all people, so that created goods should flow fairly to all. All other rights, including property and free commerce, are subordinate to this principle. Private property does not give anyone an absolute and unconditional right: no one may keep for his exclusive use what he does not need when others lack necessities. The encyclical quotes St Ambrose to this effect. The common good may sometimes require the expropriation of estates that are poorly used or kept idle while people suffer.
Against unbridled liberalism and revolution
Paul VI criticises a system that treats profit as the key motive of economic progress, competition as its supreme law and private property of the means of production as an absolute right with no social obligations. This unbridled liberalism, he says, leads to the international imperialism of money. But he also rejects revolution. Revolutionary uprisings, except in the case of manifest, long-standing tyranny that gravely damages fundamental rights and the common good, give rise to new injustices and greater misery. The way forward is bold reform.
Solidarity among nations
The second part calls on rich nations to a threefold duty: solidarity, in aid to developing nations; social justice, in rectifying unequal trade relations, since free trade between unequal partners does not guarantee justice; and universal charity, in building a more human world community. The Pope proposes a world fund, financed partly by money saved from arms spending, to help the poorest nations. He also addresses the hospitality owed to foreign students, emigrant workers and travellers.
Development, the new name for peace
The encyclical ends with its best-known theme: development is the new name for peace. Peace is not merely the absence of war or a precarious balance of power. It is built day by day through an order willed by God, which involves a more perfect justice among people. Excessive economic and social inequalities between peoples cause tensions that threaten peace.
Theological Significance
Populorum Progressio gave Catholic social teaching its global horizon and introduced the concept of integral human development, which has remained central ever since. John Paul II commemorated its twentieth anniversary with Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987), and Benedict XVI called it the Rerum Novarum of the present age in Caritas in Veritate (2009), which was written to mark its fortieth anniversary. In 2016 Pope Francis created the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, named after its central concept.
The encyclical’s theology of development rests on the doctrine of creation and on the Christian understanding of the person as called to fulfilment in God. Its humanism is not secular: development reaches its goal only when the person is open to the Absolute. Some of its economic analysis reflects the debates of the 1960s, but its principles, the universal destination of goods and the subordination of property and markets to the person, belong to the permanent core of social teaching.
For readers of this site, the encyclical belongs with the moral theology tract’s treatment of justice and property, alongside Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno.