(Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation)

As a vibrant group of men committed to follow Christ as set forth in the Gospels and striving to be faithful to the spirit of St. Louis Marie de Montfort, the Institute is trying to keep in pace with the initiatives of the Church. The endeavour of the Institute is to have the flavour of the Gospel in the lives of the Brothers and manifest it in all their undertakings.
During the General Audience on 9 April 2014, Pope Francis said: “We need to ask ourselves if our lives have the flavour of the Gospel, if others perceive that we are men and women of God; if it is the Holy Spirit that moves our lives.” The Pope is repeating it again in his latest encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, where he is inviting people to have a way of life marked by the flavour of the Gospel.

SOCIAL TEACHINGS OF THE CHURCH
The Catholic Church have been reminding us regularly about our duty towards the society at large, through various documents and the Papal encyclicals. The first social encyclical was the Rerum Novarum (“of revolutionary change”) promulgated in the year 1891 by the Pope Leo XIII. Addressing the issues of working class, it called upon the faithful to work for peace based in the pursuit of justice and love. Thereafter there have been many such encyclicals, the latest one being the Fratelli Tutti which invites us to contribute to the rebirth of a universal aspiration to fraternity (Cf. 8).
The Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church is rooted in the prophets who announced God’s special love for the poor and called God’s people to a covenant of love and justice. It is a teaching founded on the life and words of Jesus Christ, who came “to bring glad tidings to the poor . . . liberty to captives . . . recovery of sight to the blind”(Lk 4:18-19), and who identified himself with “the least of these,” the hungry and the stranger (cf. Mt 25:45).

The main themes of CST are
1. Life and Dignity of the Human Person.
2. Solidarity.
3. Care for God’s creation.
4. Call to Family, Community and Participation.
5. Option for the poor and the vulnerable.
6. Rights and Responsibilities.
7. Dignity of work and the Rights of the Workers

DICASTERY FOR PROMOTING INTEGRAL HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
In order to permeate the spirit of the Social Teachings of the Church among the faithful, a Committee for Justice and Peace was established at Vatican in the year 1967. Later in the year 1988, it was upgraded to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Pope Francis, in 2016 changed it into a full-fledged Dicastery with the name- the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

JPIC COMMISSION
Inspired by the Second Vatican Council Document, Gaudium et Spes (1965) and the Synod of Bishops on Justice and Peace (1971), the Union of Superior Generals (USG) and International union of Superior Generals (UISG), jointly established JPIC (Justice Peace and Integrity of Creation) Commission in the year 1982 and invited every Institute to have JPIC Structures.