The recommendations offered in the Concept Paper are offered within the purview of the Catholic Church’s social doctrine on poverty, more pointedly as an essential component of Jesus’ message promoting the Kingdom of God “…on earth as it is in heaven.” Pope Francis’ passionate pleas since the beginning of his Papacy in favor of our planet’s poor have awakened within the media positive responses from all social levels including many organized religious groups throughout a large cross section of the world. However, despite the clarity of the Catholic Church’s social doctrine toward this urgent issue I have yet to detect any new and creative concrete efforts or programs as to how to confront globally the glaring and unacceptable disparity between overwhelming poverty in a growing number of nations on the one hand and on the other a never before witnessed level of wealth being generated by the same economy.
Without being a professional economist I have had many years experience in development in the poorer nations of Central and South America. The purpose of my Concept Paper is to suggest a strategy of paradigmatic change that has succeeded (the beginning of paradigmatic change is considered a success in development work) through a series of methods and approaches that in my experience, at least, have not been tried on the scale required. Given the complexity of effecting the required reconstruction of a complex system, a coordinated, systematic and highly technical program is called for. If unbeknownst it has not begun already, a coincident confluence of factors appear to indicate that now is the time to begin. This is the purpose of the Concept Paper.