Beginning our discussion of the rights of the human person, we see that everyone has the right to life, to bodily integrity, and to the means which are suitable for the proper development of life; these are primarily food, clothing, shelter, rest, medical care, and finally the necessary social services. …  Therefore a human being also has the right to security in cases of sickness, inability to work, widowhood, old age, unemployment, or in any other case in which one is deprived of the means of subsistence through no fault of one’s own.
–John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, 11 (Emphasis added)

John XXIII wrote Pacem in Terris in the midst of the Cold War after witnessing the near collapse of civilization and the destruction of the planet in the Cuban Missile Crisis. In fact, he arranged for a copy of the encyclical in Russian to be delivered to Nikita Khrushchev, the Russian premier. John XXIII was determined to do whatever he could to avert such crises in the future. Continue reading →