The Catholic Church teaches that human flourishing occurs in the whole person: physical, psychological, spiritual, cultural, and social. To be integral and fully human, such development must take the whole person into account, with all of his or her dimensions, as well as the particular community they belong to as well as the whole human family, because human beings don’t flourish in isolation.
“I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”1 With these words, Jesus expresses both His own mission and that of the Church. “The glory of God,” adds St Irenaeus, “is man fully alive.”2
Development is another word for life itself. It is what everyone wants, from conception until death; it is what everyone wants for oneself, for one’s family, one’s community, one’s people; it’s what everyone should want for the whole human family, no one excluded.
In each society and in every sector of society, people need to confront the obstacles to their integral human development. The Church wants to accompany them in this great effort with its presence, guidance and encouragement. As Jesus so often said, “Don’t be afraid!”3
Famously introduced by Pope Paul VI in his encyclical Populorum Progressio (1967) and guiding our discernment for the common good in Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas (2026), today the framework of “integral human development” is widely applied by humanitarian and development organizations to address structural inequalities, poverty, violence and environmental degradation.
Development is of the whole person: True progress cannot be measured by narrow monetary indices or technology alone. Rather, “the quality of development is measured by the ability to integrate justice toward people and the care of our common home, and to promote dignified living conditions, access to necessary goods, just social relations, care of creation and consideration for future generations”4
Genuine development nourishes emotional, communal and spiritual growth, ensuring everyone’s basic material needs are met, while integrating the intangible, the environmental, and the future needs that are often forgotten.
Echoing Pope Paul VI, to be authentic, development must be of each one and of the whole one and of everyone, including future generations!
Established by Pope Francis in 2016, the Vatican’s Dicastery for Integral Human Development supports the Pope and the Bishops—the particular Churches, the Episcopal Conferences, their regional and continental unions, and the Eastern hierarchical structures—in overcoming the many obstacles to people’s integral human development. Among others, these include violence and war, human rights violations, humanitarian emergencies, environmental degradation, unemployment, inaccessible healthcare and forced migration.
The Dicastery’s programme unfolds in three steps:
- Listening and Dialogue to listens to the local Bishops and those who work with them about what’s blocking or frustrating their people’s integral human development.
- Research and Reflection studies the people’s difficult situations that were raised and suggests pastoral guidelines to deal with them.
- Communication gives back what can be helpful to the local Churches and, at the same time, communicates each new way of putting the Good News into practice with the wider Church and all God’s people.
The Superiors, Members, Consultors and staff of the Dicastery share the vocation of all the People of God: when He calls us to proclaim the Gospel, the Lord Jesus tells us to care for our weaker, sick and suffering brothers and sisters. This spirituality has its source in the love of God “who loved us first, when we were still poor and sinners.”5 Our duty is to serve our brothers and sisters in need, in whom we encounter Christ himself.6
1 John 10:10.
2 Adversus haereses, late 2nd century.
3 Matthew 14:27.
4 Magnifica Humanitas, 84.
5 Romans 5:8; 1 John 4:19.
6 Matthew 25:31-46.