The next plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences will be devoted to the study of Charity and Justice in the Relations Among Peoples and Nations. In the recent past, the Academy has devoted sessions to the study of globalisation and these have enabled us to see that there is a lack of charity and justice in the world we live in. This may be summarised in a general way as: disproportionate reallocations, promises not honoured, and unequal divisions. In addition, we are faced with new signs of the times that are very worrying. All of this has been met by the renewed appeal to charity and justice made by the Pope, Benedict XVI, in particular in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est. These facts and this appeal form an important part of the background to our meeting.
The subject of the session will be the relations among peoples and nations: the developed, the developing, the emerging and the poor. We will ask ourselves whether these relations, in the light of the social Magisterium of the Church, can become more just, fairer, and more peaceful, and what the route should be to achieve such ends. In other words, is a partnership for charity and justice possible in the globalised world?