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The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (Justitia et Pax[1][2][3][4]) was apontifical council of theRoman Curia dedicated to "action-oriented studies" for the international promotion ofjustice,peace, andhuman rights from the perspective of theRoman Catholic Church. To this end, it cooperated with variousreligious institutes and advocacy groups, as well as scholarly, ecumenical, and international organizations.
Effective 1 January 2017, the work of the Council was assumed by theDicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and CardinalPeter Turkson became Prefect of the Dicastery.[5]
TheSecond Vatican Council had proposed the creation of a body of the universal Church whose role would be "to stimulate the Catholic Community to foster progress in needy regions and social justice on the international scene".[6] It was in reply to this request thatPope Paul VI established the Pontifical Commission "Justitia et Pax" by a Motu Proprio dated 6 January 1967 (Catholicam Christi Ecclesiam).
When the Apostolic ConstitutionPastor Bonus of 28 June 1988 reorganized theRoman Curia,Pope John Paul II changed its name from Commission to Pontifical Council and reconfirmed the general lines of its work.[citation needed]
Pastor Bonus defined the objectives and mandate of thePontifical Council for Justice and Peace in the following terms:
The Council will promote justice and peace in the world, in the light of the Gospel and of the social teaching of the Church (art. 142).
- § 1. It will deepen the social doctrine of the Church and attempt to make it widely known and applied, both by individuals and communities, especially as regards relations between workers and employers. These relations must be increasingly marked by the spirit of the Gospel.
- § 2. It will assemble and evaluate various types of information and the results of research on justice and peace, the development of peoples and the violations of human rights. When appropriate, it will inform Episcopal bodies of the conclusions drawn. It will foster relations with international Catholic organizations and with other bodies, be theyCatholic or not, that are sincerely committed to the promotion of the values of justice and peace in the world.
- § 3. It will heighten awareness of the need to promote peace, above all on the occasion of theWorld Day of Peace (art. 143).
It will maintain close relations with theSecretariat of State, especially when it deals publicly with problems of justice and peace in its documents or declarations (art. 144).[7]
On Saturday, May 16, 2015,Pope Francis named the Reverend FatherTimothy Radcliffe,O.P., Director of theLas Casas Institute ofBlackfriars inOxford,England, which does studies on social justice and human rights, as one of the Consultors.[8]
There was a two-day (June 16 and 17), 2011 "Executive Summit on Ethics for the Business World", which examined Christian views, from the Catholic perspective of Pope Benedict XVI's on financial ethics and possible positive Christian-based alternatives to contemporary status quo secular best practices in the field. The summit was co-hosted by thePontifical Regina Apostolorum University and theFidelis International Institute, as well as thePontifical Academy of Sciences.[9]
According to an online news story on the conference by Carol Glatz ofCatholic News Service, on Friday, June 17, 2011, "The Vatican and some Catholic thinkers are urging businesses to not only employethical policies within their companies, but to become dedicated to bringingeconomic justice to the wider world. In fact, people should be wary of superficial ethical practices that "are adopted primarily as a marketing device, without any effect on relationships inside and outside the business itself" and without promotingjustice and thecommon good, saidCardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state. Cardinal Bertone was one of a number of speakers invited to the Executive Summit on Ethics for the Business World, sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and the Legionairies of Christ's Fidelis International Institute, which promotes ethics in business. The June 16–17 conference brought high-profile leaders from the manufacturing, industrial, banking and financial sectors including representatives fromGeneral Electric andGoldman Sachs, as well as Catholic experts in Catholic social teaching. "Everyone here has been 'cherry-picked.' It wasn't an open invitation to everybody," said FatherLuis Garza Medina, vicar general of the Legionairies of Christ, who helped in the planning of the event. Organizers purposely chose people from different industries, countries and religions in order to hammer out ethical principles held in common, which often reflect the views inherent inCatholic social thought, namely the principles of thecentrality of the human person,subsidiarity,solidarity and the pursuit of thecommon good, he toldCatholic News Service June 17. The real challenge, however, is taking those common principles and translating them into concrete action that will have a real impact on local and world economies, and on people's lives, he said. The meeting's goal was to show how "Charity in Truth",Pope Benedict XVI's 2009encyclical on social justice issues, could inspire leaders to find practical applications of theseuniversal values. In his talk June 16, Cardinal Bertone said the encyclical makes clear that there is no way businesses can remain ethically neutral: They are either serving the common good or they are not,"[10]
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