Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth)

Pope Benedict 350px

The Vatican has released Pope Benedict XVI’s Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate.

The third Encyclical of his papacy is about the Church’s social teaching and focuses on human development in charity and truth. The Pope argues that charity is at the heart of the Church’s social doctrine where every responsibility and every commitment spelt out by that doctrine is derived from love.

The Encyclical, addressed to Catholics and all men of good will, opens with the words “Charity in truth, to which Jesus Christ bore witness by his earthly life and especially by his death and resurrection, is the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity.”

Caritas in Veritate is divided into six chapters.

Click for press release announcing the Encyclical.

Read/Download

Left click on the link below to open, right click and "save target as" or "save link as" to download.

Caritas in Veritate (pdf)

Caritas in Veritate (MS Word)

Archbishop Vincent Nichols on Caritas in Veritate

+Nichols Encyclical press conference

Archbishop Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster and President of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales "warmly welcomes" Caritas in Veritate:

“Catholics in England and Wales will warmly welcome this Encyclical letter, Caritas in Veritate, as a powerful and thorough application of the vision of Christian faith to the complex problems of human development. Our hope is that it will be widely read. The letter deserves and rewards careful study. The Encyclical stands firmly in the line of Catholic Social Teaching and most especially in the tradition of Christian humanism, expressed so clearly by Pope Paul VI in Populorum Progressio.”