CSDC 342

Businesses today move in economic contexts that are becoming ever broader and in which national States show limits in their capacity to govern the rapid processes of change that effect international economic and financial relations. This situation leads businesses to take on new and greater responsibilities with respect to the past. Never has their role been so decisive with regard to the authentic integral development of humanity in solidarity. Equally decisive in this sense is their level of awareness that “development either becomes shared in common by every part of the world or it undergoes a process of regression even in zones marked by constant progress. This tells us a great deal about the nature of authentic development: either all the nations of the world participate, or it will not be true development”.⁷¹⁷ John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 17: AAS 80AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 80 (1988) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1988), 532.