Is The Pope A Globalist?

In a word, no.

Everything in Caritas in Veritate – the pro-life stuff, the pro-family stuff, the pro-worker stuff, the anti-war stuff, the lot – is wholly inimical to that approach.

But Caritas in Veritate seems to have been intended for publication in 2007, on the fortieth anniversary of Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio, but to have been delayed by events. That earlier encyclical first floated the idea of a “UN with teeth”, mirroring in the civil sphere the universality of the Catholic Church.

In so doing, it drew, in a manner actually rather more Benedict XVI than Paul VI, on the theology of the office of the Christian Roman Emperor, the Byzantine Emperor, the Holy Roman Emperor, the Tsar. And in many ways a very good tradition that is, too. But in point of fact, no such figure ever enjoyed in practice such sway over the whole world, or all Christians, or all Catholics. Many such a figure – not only Byzantine or Russian – was in serious conflict with the Papacy.

However, if there is still a comparable mission and ministry accorded by Divine Providence, then it has not been accorded to the UN, a wholly secular and in many ways far worse body. Rather, it has been accorded to the British monarch within each and among all of the constituent parts of the United Kingdom, within each and among all of the Commonwealth Realms, within each and among all of the Territories dependent on or in free association with any of those Realms, within each and among all of the Crown Dependencies, as Paramount Chief of the Great Council of Chiefs of Fiji, as Head of the Commonwealth, and elsewhere.