Pope at Audience: Politics that tends wounds and fights injustice gives hope
Pope Leo XIV said Christian engagement in economic and political life can help build peace, especially when politics addresses people’s suffering and injustice. Continuing his catechesis on the Second Vatican Council’s *Gaudium et Spes*, he offered guidance for applying Catholic social teaching to economic and political life. He called for economic development to serve people, eliminate discrimination against vulnerable groups and migrants, and respect creation. He condemned unemployment, exploitation, and unsafe working conditions, and affirmed workers’ rights to participate in decisions affecting them.
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Pope Leo XIV said Christians can contribute to peace by bringing their faith and the Church’s social teaching into economic and political life. At his November 4 General Audience, he continued a series on the Second Vatican Council’s Gaudium et Spes, outlining principles for addressing injustice, protecting human dignity and serving the common good. 1
Leo said economic development that is inequitable or disregards creation threatens peace. Echoing Gaudium et Spes, he argued that technical progress alone is insufficient: economic activity should serve people and remain under human control. He also called for action against discrimination affecting vulnerable groups and migrants. 1
The Pope described work as central to economic and social participation, but said it must not harm people, the common good or creation. He called unemployment, exploitation and conditions endangering workers’ health or lives unacceptable, and affirmed workers’ right and duty to take part in decisions affecting them, including through trade unions. 1
He also highlighted the principle that the earth’s goods are intended for everyone. Decisions about investment and economic planning, he said, should support decent lives for individuals and communities while balancing present needs against the claims of future generations. 1
Leo said political communities exist to serve the common good and should protect human rights, while taking account of local and historical circumstances and keeping the good of the human family in view. He described the Church and political community as autonomous from one another but both dedicated, in different ways, to serving people and society. Cooperation between them, he said, can make that service more effective. 1
The Pope linked politics to the work of repairing harm and confronting injustice, saying that politics which tends to the wounds of people offers hope for humanity’s future. He also recalled Pope Francis’s description of war as “a failure of politics and of humanity.” 1
Leo urged Christian communities to educate people in the Church’s Social Doctrine and encouraged young people to follow those who have borne faithful witness in economic and political life. He presented these forms of engagement as ways for Christians to put their faith into practice and help build peace. 1*
Political solidarity and economic justice as foundations for peace
Political solidarity and economic justice are not optional additions to peace; they help make peace possible and durable. In Catholic social teaching, peace is more than a pause in violence or the preservation of order. It depends on just relationships, respect for human dignity, and a willingness to seek the good of all—including those with less power. Solidarity gives that commitment a social and political form; economic justice addresses conditions that can deepen exclusion and conflict.
Solidarity does not mean simply feeling concern for people who suffer. John Paul II describes it as a “firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good”—the good of all and of each person. It therefore involves practical responsibility, including participation in public life, rather than goodwill alone.
That participation may take many forms: citizens, associations, workers’ groups, and political parties can all contribute to public life. The aim is not to make every Christian adopt one political program. The Church is not identified with a particular political community or system; rather, lay Catholics are called to bring values such as justice, solidarity, and concern for the poor into political activity.
Solidarity also changes how people and nations regard one another. John Paul II warns against treating others as instruments to be exploited and discarded; solidarity instead recognizes them as neighbours and participants in a common human good. This principle applies internationally as well as within a country: weaker nations should be able to contribute to the common good, not merely bear the costs of decisions made by more powerful states.
“In this way, the solidarity which we propose is the path to peace and at the same time to development.”
The point is not that development automatically produces peace. Rather, solidarity should shape development so that people and communities can share in its benefits and contribute to it.
Economic injustice can undermine peace when people are marginalized, the poor bear unfair burdens, or wealth and power are pursued without regard for other values. John Paul II observes that markets can support freedom and creativity, yet become harmful when governed only by the pursuit of maximum profit. Political leaders, in this account, have a responsibility to bring economic life into conformity with justice and solidarity.
The concern is not limited to conflict between wealthy and poor countries. Benedict XVI calls for global solidarity both between nations and within them, including affluent societies, and warns that globalization can create new barriers even as it brings people closer together. Greater economic connection does not by itself produce genuine communion or peace.
This has concrete implications for policy and international cooperation. The EU bishops’ statement identifies large socioeconomic disparities within and between states as a danger to peace. It also argues that international trade and financial decisions should be more consistently oriented to the needs of poor and disadvantaged people, and that responses to national debt should not impose intolerable burdens on the poorest. These are examples of the broader principle: economic arrangements should be judged partly by how they affect vulnerable people, not only by aggregate growth or the interests of the powerful.
Solidarity has a distinctly political dimension because societies contain differences and conflicts that must be addressed. The EU bishops’ statement notes that democratic processes alone do not guarantee ethically sound decisions. A living democracy also needs a civic ethos in which people recognize obligations of solidarity, not only rights they can claim. It further emphasizes political participation and legal protections for minorities as ways to address conflicts without violence.
This helps clarify why political solidarity is not simply unity behind a government, party, or national bloc. John Paul II argues that interdependence calls for overcoming exclusion and imperialism and replacing mutual distrust with cooperation. Solidarity therefore resists arrangements in which stronger actors dominate weaker ones under the guise of security or economic interest.
Pope Francis likewise identifies justice and solidarity as paths by which individuals, families, social groups, and states are called to build peace. He connects them with truthful and loving action and with contributions to integral human development, while warning that selfish individual or group interests obstruct a more just society.
A ceasefire or the absence of visible fighting may be necessary, but it is not sufficient if oppression, discrimination, or grave injustice continues. John Paul II links the disrespect of human dignity and the oppression of the weak with the abandonment of the “weapons of peace”—justice and solidarity.
Leo XIV makes the distinction explicit: the goal is not peace understood as “an absence of conflict at any cost,” but peace born of justice. His appeal to Augustine—that those who desire peace must practice justice—underscores that peace and justice are not competing aims. Justice can require confronting wrongdoing, but the goal is to repair relationships and protect human dignity, not to perpetuate hostility.
The practical conclusion is that political leaders and citizens contribute to peace when they make public life more participatory, oppose exclusion and domination, and shape economic decisions with the poor and vulnerable in view. These measures do not guarantee that conflict will disappear, and the cited teachings do not prescribe a single policy for every situation. They do establish a moral test: a peace that depends on injustice or the silencing of the weak is unstable, whereas solidarity and economic justice help create conditions in which people and nations can live together with dignity.