“The world is sick. The poor nations remain poor while the rich ones become still richer. The very life of poor nations, civil peace in developing countries, and world peace itself are at stake,” declared Pope Paul IV in his encyclical, “Populorum Progressio,” 40 years old this April. The document has a ringing tone of urgency as Paul called upon all people of good will to cooperate in achieving economic justice. Though he never mentioned the concept of globalization, he called for a “Christian vision of development” that looked as if it might have been drawn from a U.N. economic report. “Freedom of trade,” the Pope contended, “is fair only if it is subject to the demands of social justice…superfluous wealth of rich countries should be placed at the service of poor nations.” And he predicted that the continued greed of the rich nations will call upon themselves the judgment of God and the wrath of the poor, “with consequences no one can foretell.” The Pope called for international economic planning, making a sharp attack on the system of unfettered capitalism “which considers profit as the key motive for economic progress, competition as the supreme law of economics, and private ownership of the means of production as an absolute right that has no limits and carries no corresponding social obligation.”

Forty years later, this Pope’s words still resound in the ears of the world, and are well worth contemplating in the light of how little has changed for those who are poor.