Fifty years ago, Pope Paul VI released an encyclical that changed the world. Not Humanae Vitae, whose 50th anniversary falls next year, but Populorum Progressio (“On the Development of Peoples”). This 12,000-word letter has arguably inspired more people to dedicate their lives to the poor than any other text in the modern era.
Paul VI released the encyclical, his fifth, on Easter Sunday. The timing was significant. As Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has pointed out, the pope wanted to stress that “his message was one of hope, of a hope which can only spring from a belief and an understanding of the message of Jesus, the one who gave himself so that all could have life and have it to the full”. In other words, Pope Paul was not simply offering another utopian, this-worldly vision to a century ravaged by Nazism and communism.
