Has Catholicism Helped?

As the world inches closer to the 2015 target of the Millennium Development Goals, development practitioners across the globe are reflecting on the progress made against the MDGs as well as considering what the post-2015 global development agenda could look like. Which institutions, interventions, frameworks and partnerships have had the most success in alleviating poverty and are best placed to advance development? What are the transformative shifts to create a world free of poverty and achieve prosperity, equity, freedom, dignity and peace? Whose political and moral leadership can the world rely on to carry a new development agenda forward?

The world we want is not just the fodder of politicians, development bureaucrats, non-governmental organizers and grassroots mobilizers, but also a subject deliberated over centuries in great detail by the papacy. The Vatican perspective is...