The Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development

Populorum Progressio (1967): the source of the concept

The concept of "integral development" was not born in 2016: it comes directly from the social encyclical Populorum Progressio, published by Paul VI on 26 March 1967, less than eighteen months after the close of the Second Vatican Council. Paragraph 14 of that encyclical — the founding text of all contemporary social doctrine on the subject — states the central thesis that the new Dicastery is called to embody institutionally:

"Development cannot be limited to mere economic growth. In order to be authentic, it must be complete: integral, that is, it has to promote the good of every man and of the whole man." — Pope Paul VI, encyclical Populorum Progressio, § 14, 26 March 1967^[7]

This phrase — "every man and the whole man" — became, half a century later, the theological keystone of the Dicastery: it explains why a single Roman institution brings together matters as diverse as the economy, ecology, migration, prisons, the death penalty and health. For Paul VI, these fields are not juxtaposed for administrative convenience: they are facets of a single reality, that of the human person considered in his totality — bodily, social, spiritual — and not reduced to a single one of his dimensions.

Gaudium et Spes (1965): the Council's call for a universal organism

The idea of a Roman organism dedicated to social justice and the development of peoples even predates Populorum Progressio: it is written into the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes of the Second Vatican Council, promulgated on 7 December 1965. At the end of its chapter on the international community, the Council expresses an explicit wish:

"The Council, for its part, considers it most desirable that an organism of the universal Church be set up, charged with prompting the Catholic community to promote progress in needy regions and social justice among nations." — Second Vatican Council, pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes, no. 90 § 3, 7 December 1965^[8]

It is precisely this conciliar wish that Pope Paul VI fulfilled thirteen months later, on 6 January 1967, by founding the Pontifical Commission "Justice and Peace" through the motu proprio Catholicam Christi Ecclesiam^[9]. Gaudium et Spes and Populorum Progressio remain, to this day, the two reference texts that the Dicastery cites as its founding theological acts, well before Humanam Progressionem^[10].

The fiftieth-anniversary congress (2017): a new dicastery claims Paul VI as its own

Barely three months after taking office, the new Dicastery organised, on 3 and 4 April 2017 in the New Synod Hall, an international congress entitled "Perspectives for integral human development, fifty years after the encyclical Populorum Progressio"^[11]. Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, gave the opening address on "the Christian anthropological vision, foundation of the concept of integral human development", and Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State, celebrated the congress Mass at the Altar of the Chair in St Peter's Basilica^[12]. Received in audience on 4 April, Pope Francis summed up the mission he had just entrusted to the new Dicastery with a simple image:

"Human life is like an orchestra that plays well when its different instruments are in tune with one another." — Pope Francis, address to the participants in the congress for the fiftieth anniversary of Populorum Progressio, 4 April 2017^[13]

The musical image conveys the very logic of the 2016 merger: the economy, ecology, migration and health are not separate dossiers entrusted for convenience to a single office, but instruments of a single orchestra, that of the integral development of the human person.

The founding text: the motu proprio Humanam Progressionem

On 17 August 2016, during the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, Pope Francis signed the apostolic letter in the form of a motu proprio Humanam Progressionem, whose opening immediately states the theological principle of the reform:

"In her whole being and in all her actions, the Church is called to promote the integral development of the human person in the light of the Gospel. This development takes place through attention to the inestimable goods of justice, peace and the care of creation." — Pope Francis, apostolic letter Humanam Progressionem, 17 August 2016^[14]

The text establishes the new Dicastery and defines its field of competence in a single dense sentence that would become the matrix of all its action: it will be "particularly competent in matters concerning migration, those in need, the sick and the excluded, the marginalised and victims of armed conflict and natural disasters, prisoners, the unemployed and victims of every form of slavery and torture"^[15]. Governed by Statutes approved the same day ad experimentum, the Dicastery absorbs, from 1 January 2017, the responsibilities of four pontifical councils which cease their functions and are abolished on that date, entailing the repeal of articles 142 to 153 of the 1988 apostolic constitution Pastor Bonus^[16].

The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (1967-2016)

The first of the four merged bodies is also the oldest and, doctrinally, the most central: the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace, founded by Paul VI on 6 January 1967 through the motu proprio Catholicam Christi Ecclesiam, in direct response to the wish of Gaudium et Spes no. 90^[17]. Its first president was Cardinal Maurice Roy (1905-1985), Archbishop of Quebec and Primate of the Church in Canada, appointed on the very day of its foundation^[18]. After a decade of experimental existence, Paul VI gave it definitive status through the motu proprio Justitiam et Pacem of 10 December 1976, then John Paul II turned it into a Pontifical Council during the general reform of the Curia by Pastor Bonus on 28 June 1988^[19]. Among its successive presidents were Cardinals Roger Etchegaray, François-Xavier Nguyên Van Thuân — a former Vietnamese political prisoner, whose testimony lastingly shaped the Council's doctrine on the dignity of prisoners —, Renato Raffaele Martino, and finally the Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson, president from 2009 to 2016, who quite naturally became the first prefect of the newly merged Dicastery^[20].

The Pontifical Council Cor Unum (1971-2016)

The second body, Cor Unum (literally "one heart", from Acts 4:32), was founded by Paul VI on 15 July 1971 through the apostolic letter Amoris Officio, with the mission of coordinating all Catholic charitable initiatives worldwide and expressing "the solicitude of the Catholic Church for the needy"^[21]. Its first president was Cardinal Jean Villot, then Paul VI's Secretary of State, in office from 1971 to 1978; he was replaced, on 4 September 1978 — the only administrative appointment of the very brief pontificate of John Paul I — by the Beninese Cardinal Bernardin Gantin^[22]. Cor Unum notably coordinated the major Catholic emergency relief operations following natural disasters and armed conflicts, in liaison with national charitable organisations such as Caritas.

The Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People (1970/1988-2016)

The third body originates in the Pontifical Commission for the Spiritual Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, instituted by Paul VI on 19 March 1970 through the motu proprio Apostolicae Caritatis, then attached to the Congregation for Bishops^[23]. John Paul II's apostolic constitution Pastor Bonus, on 28 June 1988, raised it to the rank of an autonomous Pontifical Council and entrusted it with the care of all those who had to leave their homeland or have none — refugees and exiles, migrants, nomads and circus workers, seafarers at sea and in ports, as well as airport and aviation personnel^[24]. It was this council that provided, in 2016, the institutional core of the future Migrants and Refugees Section.

The Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Health Care Workers (1985-2016)

The fourth and most recent body is the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Health Care Workers, instituted by John Paul II on 11 February 1985 — the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes — through the motu proprio Dolentium Hominum^[25]. Originally a simple Commission attached to the Pontifical Council for the Laity, it was detached from it and turned into an autonomous Council by Pastor Bonus in 1988^[26]. Its mission was to express the Church's solicitude for the sick, the disabled and all health-care professionals, in line with John Paul II's apostolic letter Salvifici Doloris (1984) on the Christian meaning of human suffering.

Reading the table: the four bodies born between 1967 and 1985, all erected as autonomous Pontifical Councils during the great curial reform of 1988, were simultaneously abolished on 1 January 2017 to form the new Dicastery.

Francis's decision: an exception in the whole Roman Curia

From the Dicastery's creation, Pope Francis took a decision without precedent in the recent history of the Roman Curia: he announced that he would himself, personally, lead the section devoted to migrants, refugees and victims of trafficking — while all the Dicastery's other matters fall under the ordinary authority of the prefect. On 5 November 2016, addressing thousands of representatives of Popular Movements, he explained this choice in terms that leave no doubt as to its deliberately exceptional character:

"In the dicastery for which Cardinal Turkson is responsible, there is a section that deals with these situations. I have decided that, at least for a time, this section will depend directly on the Pope, for this is a scandalous situation, which I can only describe with a word I spontaneously uttered at Lampedusa: shame." — Pope Francis, address to the participants in the 3^rd meeting of Popular Movements, 5 November 2016^[27]

The word with which Francis sums up the situation — "shame", which he says he spontaneously uttered at Lampedusa — signals the gravity with which he then perceived the treatment of migrants and refugees in the world, a few months after the peak of the 2015-2016 European migration crisis and his own journey to the island of Lesbos (16 April 2016).

Two under-secretaries appointed directly by the Pope

On 14 December 2016, Francis appointed two under-secretaries specifically in charge of this Section, both from religious traditions devoted to human mobility: Father Michael Czerny, a Canadian Jesuit of Czech origin, and Father Fabio Baggio, an Italian Scalabrinian missionary — the Scalabrinian order having been founded in the 19^th century specifically for the pastoral accompaniment of Italian emigrants^[28]. For more than six years, the Section worked under the Pope's direct leadership, while remaining administratively integrated into the Dicastery headed by Cardinal Turkson^[29].

Michael Czerny himself embodies, through his own story, the issue entrusted to this Section. Born in Brno (Czechoslovakia) on 18 July 1946, into a family whose maternal branch, Jewish converts to Catholicism, was struck by the Shoah — his maternal grandparents interned at Terezín, his grandfather dying in deportation, his uncles dying in a labour camp —, the Czerny family fled the Communist regime and emigrated to Canada in 1948^[30]. Having become a Jesuit in 1964, co-founder in 1979 of the Jesuit Centre for Social Faith and Justice in Toronto, then founder in 2002 of the African Jesuit AIDS Network, he was called to Rome by Francis in 2016 precisely for this mission to migrants^[31]. He was created cardinal on 5 October 2019^[32].

Fabio Baggio, born on 15 January 1965 in Bassano del Grappa (Veneto), joined the Scalabrinians in 1976, was ordained priest in 1992 and earned a doctorate in Church history at the Pontifical Gregorian University in 1998^[33]. A missionary for eight years in Latin America then eight years in the Philippines, he worked from 1999 with Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, where from 2002 he headed the diocesan migration office — a collaboration that explains his swift appointment to Rome as soon as his former archbishop was elected Pope^[34]. He was created cardinal on 7 December 2024^[35].

The Section's definitive integration into the Dicastery (2023)

After six years of operating under direct pontifical leadership, the Migrants and Refugees Section was fully integrated into the Dicastery's ordinary structure from 1 January 2023, returning to the common regime of the other sections placed under the prefect's authority^[36]. This reintegration, announced without fanfare or bombshell press release, marks the end of a seven-year transitional period during which the Pope personally followed, week after week, one of the most sensitive dossiers of his pontificate.

During its mandate under pontifical leadership, the Section published pastoral reference documents — notably the "Twenty Points of Action" proposed in 2017 for the United Nations Global Compacts on migration and refugees, structured around the four verbs Francis would then make his own in his teaching on the question: welcome, protect, promote, integrate.

A general mission in four paragraphs

On 19 March 2022, on the solemnity of Saint Joseph, Pope Francis signed the apostolic constitution Praedicate Evangelium on the Roman Curia, which entered into force on 5 June 2022, on the solemnity of Pentecost. The text confirms the Dicastery under its current name and devotes a detailed section to it, articles 163 to 174, which clarify and expand the mission set in 2016. Article 163 states the general definition:

"The Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development has the task of promoting the human person and the dignity received from God, human rights, health, justice and peace. It is concerned principally with questions connected with the economy and work, the protection of creation and of the earth as our 'common home', migration and humanitarian emergencies." — Pope Francis, apostolic constitution Praedicate Evangelium, art. 163 § 1, 19 March 2022^[37]

The following paragraphs of the same article specify that the Dicastery "deepens and disseminates the Church's social doctrine on integral human development", that it supports particular Churches and episcopal conferences "in the area of integral human promotion", and that it calls upon experts from institutes of consecrated life as well as development and humanitarian-action bodies, in cooperation with civil society and international organisations, while respecting the responsibilities of the Secretariat of State^[38].

Integral ecology, the legacy of Laudato Si'

Article 164 entrusts the Dicastery with accompanying the implementation of the Church's teaching "in the areas of the protection and integral development of the environment", in cooperation with other Christian confessions, other religions, civil authorities and international bodies^[39]. This responsibility, absent from the initial 2016 letter, reflects the influence of Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato Si' (24 May 2015) on "care for our common home", published a year before the Dicastery's foundation and whose theme of integral ecology is now steered, within the Dicastery, by a dedicated Commission for Ecology.

Justice, peace and the fight against slavery

Article 165 lists four concrete missions in the area of justice and peace: preventing and resolving conflicts in liaison with the Secretariat of State; defending the dignity and fundamental rights of the person, including social, economic and political rights; supporting initiatives "against trafficking in human beings, forced prostitution, the exploitation of minors and vulnerable persons, and the various forms of slavery and torture", as well as attention to prisoners' conditions of detention and commitment "to the abolition of the death penalty"^[40]; and finally material and spiritual assistance to migrants, refugees and displaced persons in the particular Churches^[41].

The pastoral care of the sea and of aviation

Article 166 entrusts the Dicastery with the pastoral care of seafarers, "both at sea and in ports", notably through the Work of the Apostleship of the Sea (Stella Maris), which it directs, as well as solicitude for those who work in airports or on aircraft^[42]. This responsibility, inherited directly from the former Pontifical Council for Migrants, illustrates the continuity between the old and the new institution on dossiers less publicised than overland migration.

Poverty, corruption and economic models

Articles 167 and 168 specify the Dicastery's action in economic matters: fighting poverty in collaboration with national and international cooperation institutes, encouraging initiatives "against corruption and in favour of good governance"^[43], promoting "fair economic models and sober lifestyles", and combating "the economic and social exploitation of poor countries, asymmetric trade relations, financial speculation and development models that cause exclusion"^[44]. This last formula takes up, almost literally, the vocabulary of the critique Francis has developed since the exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (2013) against what he calls "an economy that kills".

The World Days attached to the Dicastery

Article 169 associates the Dicastery with promoting, together with diocesan bishops and episcopal conferences, "sensitivity for peace, commitment to justice and solidarity towards the weakest and most socially fragile persons, in particular on the occasion of the World Days dedicated to them"^[45]. Three World Days fall directly within this scope: the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, instituted in December 1914, under Benedict XV^[46], and celebrated each year in September or October; the World Day of the Sick, instituted by John Paul II on 13 May 1992 and celebrated on 11 February, feast of Our Lady of Lourdes^[47]; and the World Day of the Poor, instituted by Francis in the apostolic letter Misericordia et Misera, dated 20 November 2016, at the close of the Jubilee of Mercy, and celebrated each year on the 33^rd Sunday of Ordinary Time — the first edition having taken place on 19 November 2017^[48].

Migration, health and institutional relations

Article 170 entrusts the Dicastery with analysing the causes of migration and flight from countries of origin, promoting "integration in host countries", and cooperating, in agreement with the Secretariat of State, with development agencies and international organisations to draw up regulations favourable to refugees, asylum seekers and migrants^[49]. Article 171 entrusts it with promoting "just and integral health care", with particular attention to the marginalisation of the sick and disabled and to the lack of personnel, equipment and medicines in poor countries^[50]. Articles 172 and 173 organise the Dicastery's cooperation with the Secretariat of State for any public statement touching on international relations, as well as its collaboration with the Holy See's humanitarian works in crisis zones^[51].

Supervision of Caritas Internationalis

Article 174, finally, places the Dicastery in close relationship with the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and the Pontifical Academy for Life, and confers on it direct responsibility "with regard to Caritas Internationalis and the International Catholic Migration Commission, in accordance with their statutes"^[52]. This last provision is of considerable practical scope: Caritas Internationalis, the world confederation of the one hundred and sixty-two national Catholic charitable organisations, thus finds itself placed under the direct canonical supervision of the same Dicastery that absorbed the former Cor Unum — whose coordination of the world's Catholic charitable works was precisely its original 1971 vocation.

Current sections and commissions

According to the Dicastery's official organisational chart, day-to-day activity is organised around three cross-cutting sections — Listening and Dialogue, Reflection and Research, Communication and Feedback — and specialised thematic commissions, foremost among them the Commission for Charity, direct heir of Cor Unum, and the Commission for Ecology, in charge of following up Laudato Si' and the Laudato Si' Action Platform launched in 2021^[53]. A Commission for Health Care Workers, heir of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Health Care Workers, completes this apparatus, alongside the office in charge of the pastoral care of the sea (Stella Maris) and that for migration, respective heirs of two of the other councils merged in 2016.

The Vatican COVID-19 Commission (2020)

The Dicastery's most visible activity during Cardinal Turkson's mandate remains the creation, on 20 March 2020, in the midst of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, of a Vatican Covid-19 Commission placed under his direct authority. Pope Francis explained its mission in these terms:

"We must think now about the economic and social consequences of the pandemic, so as not to be caught unprepared." — Pope Francis, quoted by Cardinal Peter Turkson, interview with Vatican News, April 2020^[54]

The Commission, led by Cardinal Turkson, assisted by the Dicastery's secretary Bruno-Marie Duffé and deputy secretary Augusto Zampini, is organised into five distinct working groups: the first acts in cooperation with Caritas Internationalis to identify the real needs of local Churches; the second, described by Turkson as a night watch "like a sentinel awaiting the dawn", brings together experts in ecology, economics, health and public safety to anticipate the post-crisis period; the third handles communication and awareness-raising; the fourth, coordinated by the Secretariat of State, deals with relations with States and multilateral bodies; the fifth, finally, seeks the necessary funds according to the principles of a "virtuous circulation of wealth"^[55]. This dense yet short-lived structure concretely illustrates, in a situation of global crisis, the Dicastery's integral vocation: it simultaneously mobilises emergency charitable aid, scientific expertise, communication, diplomacy and financing — that is, the combined fourfold legacy of the former Cor Unum, Justice and Peace, Migrants and Health councils.

Cardinal Peter Turkson, first prefect (2016-2021)

Born on 11 October 1948 in Wassaw Nsuta (Ghana), ordained priest in 1975 for the Archdiocese of Cape Coast, Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson was Archbishop of Cape Coast from 1992 to 2009, then created cardinal by John Paul II in 2003 — the first Ghanaian cardinal in history^[56]. President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace from 2009 to 2016, he was quite naturally designated by Francis as the first prefect of the newly merged Dicastery, a post he held from 31 August 2016 to 31 December 2021^[57]. Under his mandate, the Dicastery went through the European migration crisis, the institutional application of Laudato Si', and the Covid-19 pandemic. After an evaluation visit conducted during the summer of 2021, the Dicastery's officials handed their mandate back to the Pope, who thanked them for their service; Turkson then became chancellor of the Pontifical Academies of Sciences (2022)^[58].

Cardinal Michael Czerny, second prefect (2022-2026)

From 1 January 2022, Francis entrusted the interim leadership of the Dicastery to Cardinal Michael Czerny, already under-secretary of the Migrants and Refugees Section since 2016, with Sister Alessandra Smerilli as interim secretary^[59]. On 23 April 2022, these two appointments became definitive, for a five-year term^[60]. Under Czerny's prefecture, the Migrants and Refugees Section was fully reintegrated into the Dicastery (1 January 2023) and Father Bruno-Marie Duffé handed over his office as secretary to Sister Smerilli. Cardinal Czerny reached the canonical retirement age of eighty on 18 July 2026.

Sister Alessandra Smerilli, first woman prefect (from 1 September 2026)

On 30 June 2026, Pope Leo XIV announced that Sister Alessandra Smerilli, a Salesian Sister of Don Bosco (F.M.A.), would succeed Cardinal Czerny at the head of the Dicastery from 1 September 2026 — thus becoming the second woman in history appointed prefect of a dicastery of the Roman Curia, after Sister Simona Brambilla^[61]. Born in 1974 in Vasto (Italy), an economist by training, with a doctorate in political economy from the La Sapienza University of Rome and a doctorate in economics from the University of East Anglia (Norwich), former professor of political economy at the Pontifical Faculty of Educational Sciences Auxilium in Rome, she had already been a pioneer by becoming, under the pontificate of Francis, the first woman appointed secretary of a Roman dicastery (2021), then by being named a Councillor of State of Vatican City in 2019 — a first for a woman in that office^[62]. She had also coordinated the first working group of the Vatican Covid-19 Commission in 2020.

Since certain acts are reserved by canon law to ordained clerics, Sister Smerilli's appointment as prefect is accompanied by that of Cardinal Fabio Baggio, then under-secretary, as pro-prefect from the same date, notably in charge of the new Laudato Si' Centre for Higher Studies^[63]. This two-headed architecture — a woman religious as prefect assisted by a cardinal pro-prefect for the hierarchical acts that require it — reproduces a pattern already inaugurated in January 2025 at the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life, where Sister Simona Brambilla had been appointed prefect alongside a cardinal pro-prefect. Monsignor Jozef Barlaš, until then under-secretary, was simultaneously promoted secretary of the Dicastery^[64].

Integral development: an anthropology before a policy

No administrative reform of this Dicastery can be understood without the theological foundation that precedes it: the Catholic conviction that the human person, created in the image of God, possesses a dignity that cannot be enclosed in any single category — neither purely economic, nor purely biological, nor purely juridical. The Catechism of the Catholic Church recalls that the Church's social doctrine "forms an integral part of the Church's evangelising mission"^[65] and that it "belongs not to the field of ideology but to that of moral theology"^[66]. It is this conviction — that Christian charity is necessarily exercised in the social, economic and political order, and not only in the private sphere — that explains why Paul VI, then Francis, judged a permanent Roman institution necessary for this service, rather than leaving social doctrine as mere theoretical teaching.

A magisterial continuity: Rerum Novarum, Populorum Progressio, Laudato Si'

The Dicastery stands in an unbroken magisterial lineage from the founding encyclical of Catholic social doctrine, Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII (1891), through Populorum Progressio (1967), which gives it its name, to Laudato Si' (2015) and Fratelli Tutti (2020) of Francis, which extend integral development to care for creation and universal fraternity. This continuity, far from being a mere rhetorical convenience, guarantees that the Dicastery remains an organ at the service of the doctrine received from the Church, and not a mere technical bureau of social policy modelled on the secular international agencies with which it cooperates.

• The Roman Curia — all the dicasteries, tribunals and offices through which the Pope governs the Catholic Church.
• The Dicastery for the Clergy — another great dicastery born of the curial merger and redistribution undertaken since Vatican II.
• The Dicastery for Evangelization — the organ responsible for the new evangelisation and missionary proclamation.
• The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) — the council whose constitution Gaudium et Spes called for the creation of a Roman organism for justice and the development of peoples.
• Rerum Novarum and social doctrine — the founding encyclical of the Catholic Church's social doctrine.
• Trade unions and social doctrine — another facet of Catholic social teaching now carried by this same Dicastery.