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Pope Benedict 's encyclical on globalisation delayed again
20 May, 2009: Pope Benedict XVI's new social encyclical has been delayed once again. According to a report by Robert Mickens in the London Tablet (2 May), even the Pope's Secr etary of State, Cardinal Bertone, does not know when it will be published. He and Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, have suggested a series of dates, but the Pope has again withdrawn the encyclical to rework it in the light of the continuing economic crisis. After his recent trips to Africa and the Middle East, he may also wish to give more attention to the plight of these regions.
According to reports in Rome, the Pope is relying on four senior cardinals, whom he consulted on 22 April: Cardinal Ruini (retired vicar of Rome), Angelo Bagnasco (president of the Italian Bishops' Conference), Angelo Scola (Patriarch of Venice) and Christoph Schonborn OP (Archbishop of Vienna).
Pope Benedict greeted in Angola
Various groups have been contributing to help prepare for the encyclical. In addition to specialists in the Vatican Secretariat of State and the diplomatic corps, along with the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences has for some years been conducting forums involving world specialists in various aspects of globalisation. Many of these consultations have been published in book form and are available for download from the Vatican website at www.vatican.va under the social sciences button.
As we reported some months ago, Cardinal Martino had said the encyclical was finished and in the hands of translators, and would be released in early May. The anniversary of Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum was 15 May.
The encyclical was originally intended to address issues of globalisation and commemorate the 40th anniverary of Pope Paul VI's landmark encyclical, Development of Peoples.
This encyclical will be the third by Pope Benedict, and is the first major encyclical devoted to questions of social justice, peace, global poverty and hunger since Pope John Paul II's Centesimus Annus of 1991, which commemorated Pope Leo's foundational 1891 social encyclical, On the Condition of the Working Class (Rerum Novarum).
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