There is no magisterial definition of Integral Human Development (IHD). There are bits and pieces from scripture, tradition and modern Catholic Social Teaching (CST) documents, but no neat definition. Yet for Pope Francis, the term expands and builds on what Justice and Peace has meant in the past. He changed the name of the former Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace to the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, incorporating the dicasteries (ministries) dealing with charity, people on the move (refugees, migrants and asylum seekers) and health, and adding what he calls in Laudato Si’, integral ecology. In other words, the Pope has inserted the entire gamut of services that care for humanity and the planet into the one ecclesial organisation. It illustrates well one of his main points in Laudato Si’, that “everything is connected”. (1)
In introducing Integral Human Development viewed through the lens of Pope Francis, I am going to concentrate on what it means for Catholic aid and development agencies (such as SCIAF/Caritas Scotland). But bear in mind - IHD is much larger.
In 2017, at a meeting to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Populorum Progressio, Pope Francis called integral human development “the path of good that the human family is called to follow”, illustrating how we as followers of Christ must live out the common good in our lives. (2) The South African Dominican theologian, Albert Nolan OP, describes the common good as “whatever is best for the whole human family or the whole community of living beings, or the whole universe in its grand unfolding”. (3)
So IHD is much more than a development which integrates all aspects of life, an IHD definition which many Catholic aid and development agencies have used.
IHD is not a new development theory but a moral theology that builds on the best community, people-centred development practices while adding insights from Catholic Social Teaching and the lives of the poorest. St Paul VI’s encyclical, Populorum Progressio (1967), broke the link between development and economic growth, promoted by the modernisation theorists. Unlike them, he insisted that, to be authentic, development had to promote the good of every person and the whole person, including the spirituality of the person, shifting the emphasis from an externality to an inner transformation which included the option for the poor. What does it mean in practice?
IHD promotes a holistic development that covers the whole of life, including the transcendent. After all, in the global South, most communities follow a faith tradition which provides them with the values that inform their decisions on important life matters. The late Kenyan theologian, John Mbiti, wrote that it was religion that coloured Africans’ understanding of the Universe and their participation in that universe, and that resulted in the saying of ‘I am because we are’. (4) Yet religion with its communitarian view of life is scarcely taken into account when westerners design development programmes in the sub-Saharan region where fifty per cent of the world’s poorest people live. IHD respects traditional cultures, values and institutions and works through them so that the people own their own development and programmes are shaped around their own beliefs.
IHD’s starting point is to uphold the dignity of the human person. That also means listening to and empowering the so-called beneficiaries whom SCIAF, having decolonised their language, now call ‘programme participants’. That means making partners (the community-based organisations which implement programmes on the ground) co-creators of programmes. The people themselves become the ‘doers and judges’ of programmes. (5) That then builds up their self-esteem which enables them to make their development sustainable.
It is important that the development worker (or supporter) is transformed as well as the programme participant and that she develops, in the words of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, “a heart which sees” which combines radical empathy with a deeper sense of human flourishing.(6) IHD demands that the so-called beneficiaries are the subjects of their own development and not the objects of someone else’s idea of how they should be ‘developed’.
In summary, IHD means for Catholic aid agencies that human dignity comes before unbridled economic growth; that a suitable anthropology emerges out of a Catholic understanding of what ‘human’ means; that peace with justice and reconciliation practice are cross-cutting issues since without peace there is no development; that the role of lay people is important in terms of implementation; that the poor themselves participate comprehensively and actively in their own development; that the demand issuing from the Second Vatican Council documents and Fratelli Tutti to engage ecumenically and with other faiths is taken seriously; that, as Pope Francis writes, there is an “integrated approach to combatting poverty, restoring dignity and at the same time protecting nature”. (7)
What this looks like reminds me of a succinct comment by a resident in a care home run by Caritas Czech in Brno, “I came here to die but Caritas has made me see that I am here to live”.
Dr Duncan MacLaren KCSG, SCIAF’s first Director, former Secretary General of Caritas Internationalis and former Adjunct Professor of Australian Catholic University where he taught Catholic social ethics and International Development Studies. His doctorate deals with integral human development. He was made a Knight Commander of St Gregory the Great in 2016 by Pope Francis for his service to the Church.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Pope Francis, Laudato Si’: on Care for our Common Home, (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2015) par. 16.
(2) Pope Francis, Address to Vatican Conference on 50th anniversary of “Populorum Progressio”, 4th April 2017. Retrieved from http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2017/april/documents/papa-francesco_20170404_convegno-populorum-progressio.html
(3) Albert Nolan OP, Jesus Today: A Spirituality of Radical Freedom, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006) 188
(4) John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy, (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1969) 262.
(5) The term ‘Doers and judges’ comes from Amartya Sen’s book, Development as Freedom (Oxford: OUP, 1999).
(6) Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2005) par. 31b.
(7) Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ op. cit.