The Church and Progress

The Role of Laity in the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development

Abstract

The study examines the Dicastery's structure and functioning in the light of the purposes that pertain to it, already on the basis of the Statute, later confirmed and perfected by the Constitution reforming the Roman Curia. The important role the laity can assume in it - with regard to interpreting the signs of the times as well as to the implementation of the social magisterium of the Church - seems to find specific reasons in their vocation to the sanctification of the temporal order, newly percepted though, on one hand and in the material and professional criterion of attributing dicasterial competences on the other hand