Acta Benedicti Pp. XVI 363

II

Ad XIII Plenariam Sessionem Pontificiae Academiae Scientiarum Socialium.

To Her Excellency Professor

Mary Ann Glendon

President of the Pontifical

Academy of Social Sciences

As the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences gathers for its thirteenth

Plenary Session, I am pleased to greet you and your distinguished confreres

and to convey my prayerful good wishes for your deliberations.

The Academy's meeting this year is devoted to an examination of the

theme: ''Charity and Justice in the Relations among Peoples and Nations''.

The Church cannot fail to be interested in this subject, inasmuch as the

pursuit of justice and the promotion of the civilization of love are essential

aspects of her mission of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Certainly the

building of a just society is the primary responsibility of the political order,

both in individual States and in the international community. As such, it

demands, at every level, a disciplined exercise of practical reason and a

training of the will in order to discern and achieve the specific requirements

of justice in full respect for the common good and the inalienable dignity of

each individual. In my Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, I wished to reaffirm, at

the beginning of my Pontificate, the Church's desire to contribute to this

necessary purification of reason, to help form consciences and to stimulate a

greater response to the genuine requirements of justice. At the same time, I

wished to emphasize that, even in the most just society, there will always be

a place for charity: ''there is no ordering of the State so just that it can

eliminate the need for a service of love''.1

The Church's conviction of the inseparability of justice and charity is

ultimately born of her experience of the revelation of God's infinite justice

and mercy in Jesus Christ, and it finds expression in her insistence that man

himself and his irreducible dignity must be at the centre of political and social

life. Her teaching, which is addressed not only to believers but to all people of

good will, thus appeals to right reason and a sound understanding of human

1 No. 28.