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Pope: Progress must not leave new ruins in its wake
Pope Leo meets participants in the ‘Fratelli tutti: North-South Socio-Environmental Dialogue’ meeting, and stresses our shared responsibility in the face of social, economic and technological challenges.
By Sebastián Sansón Ferrari
Differences do not necessarily have to lead to division. They can become a creative force when accompanied by shared responsibility and directed towards the common good.
That was one of the key themes of Pope Leo XIV’s message to participants in the Fourth ‘Fratelli Tutti’ Synodal Meeting, whom he received in audience in the Vatican today, Saturday 12 September 2026. The event had been held from Thursday 10 to Saturday 12 September in Rome.
In his wide-ranging address, delivered both in Spanish and in English, the Pope greeted representatives of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Council, the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
He also thanked representatives of international organisations, regional development banks, businesses, foundations, trade unions, employers’ associations, universities, ecclesial networks and social organisations for their presence.
The breadth of representation, he said, gives the meeting particular significance, and reflects a willingness to continue a dialogue which can translate into models of development that are “more human, sustainable and in solidarity”.
READ THE POPE’S FULL ADDRESS HERE
Pope Leo addresses the group (@VATICAN MEDIA)
“A courageous and confident dialogue”
The Pope linked this effort to an essential dimension of the Church’s mission. He recalled that, at the beginning of his pontificate, he had told the College of Cardinals on 10 May 2025 of the need for a “courageous and confident dialogue with the contemporary world in its different components and realities”.
Dialogue with the world, he explained, is not a secondary activity for the Church but part of its evangelising mission. The Church proclaims the Gospel amid the concrete circumstances in which peoples live and is therefore called to look squarely at the reality of men and women.
In this context, the Pope recalled that the Church is called to “embrace reality” and to expose the contradictions that can accompany scientific and technological progress, whose unprecedented possibilities bring new responsibilities.
What kind of humanity do we want to build?
Faced with technological development, Leo XIV urged people to go beyond simply accepting or rejecting particular tools. The decisive question, he said, is “what kind of humanity we want to build and what place each person will have in it”.
The Pope placed this question within the horizon of Christian faith: God has entered history and, in Jesus Christ, has taken on humanity. The Church is therefore called to discern, within history, what truly serves the human person and what may ultimately turn against it.
The transformations of our time, he added, demand a responsibility that exceeds the capacity of any single institution. Hence the need to recover the logic of subsidiarity, recognising each actor’s own responsibility while also acknowledging the need to work together.
Pope Leo arrives in the Vatican’s Consistory Hall to greet the group (@VATICAN MEDIA)
In this regard, he welcomed the initiative of promoting a North-South Shared Responsibility Agenda for Multisectoral Cooperation.
“When public institutions, businesses, workers, universities, communities and social organisations share their knowledge, capacities and resources in the service of the common good, a conviction that has matured within the Church’s social doctrine and that my Predecessors have developed in different ways takes concrete shape: major social challenges require shared responsibility, participation and collaboration among the different bodies of society.”
Catholic Social Teaching as a process of discernment
In the English-language section of his address, the Pope focused on the res novae, the new realities shaping our time, calling for institutions capable of regulating without stifling.
He also highlighted the responsibility of businesses, which must recognise human dignity, and not just profit, as a measure of success.
In this regard, the Pope highlighted Catholic Social Teaching, highlighting that it is not a manual of principles and rules to be applied mechanically, but rather “a process of shared discernment”.
It does not replace the decisions that different actors are called to make, the Pope said. Instead, CST provides criteria for judging whether those decisions genuinely respect human dignity and serve the common good.
A culture of negotiation
Pope Leo also encouraged the cultivation of a “healthy culture of negotiation”.
Negotiation, he said, can open paths where differences appear to have closed every possibility of encounter. In this way, those involved in the process can also contribute to the diplomacy of peace that the world needs.
Pope Leo brought his address to a conclusion by expressing the hope that the progress of our time would not leave new ruins in its wake, so that what we build might truly become “a home and a refuge for all”.
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