Pope Benedict XVI has written a new encyclical on just economics, insisting that all financial decisions are moral decisions, upholding the rights of workers and calling for an international authority to protect poor nations against greater powers.

"I would like to remind everyone, especially governments engaged in boosting the world's economic and social assets, that the primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity," he wrote.

The pope penned a phrase considered politically suicidal in the U.S., writing enthusiastically that the right use of globalization can "open up the unprecedented possibility of large-scale redistribution of wealth on a worldwide scale."

George Worgul, chairman of the theology department at Duquesne University, called the document "an enormous challenge" to global leaders and average citizens.

"This encyclical highlights, in a way that people of most other traditions would embrace, how all of our actions -- even the act of being a consumer -- have moral and ethical components," he said.

The 144-page encyclical was postponed from last year to include response to the global economic crisis. It was released just prior to a G-8 summit in Italy and a scheduled meeting between Pope Benedict and President Barack Obama.

The Latin title, "Caritas in Veritate," means "Charity in Truth." The pope does not use "charity" in the popular sense of handouts to the poor, but in the theological sense of self-sacrificial love. The central message is that all economic acts must begin with love for the individual human beings that they will affect. It argues that this is best grounded in the belief that there is a God who loves everyone.

The pope criticized economic decisions made solely for the short-term interest of investors, particularly when jobs are lost.

Management "must also assume responsibility for all the other stakeholders who contribute to the life of the business: the workers, the clients, the suppliers of various elements of production, the community," he wrote. He calls for reforming the United Nations and global financial bodies to create a new authority governing social justice.

"To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis ... to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration, for all of this, there is an urgent need of a true world political authority," he wrote.

He emphasized connections between life issues, involving the unborn and disabled, and justice issues, involving the hungry and oppressed. He linked environmentalism with opposition to abortion.

"The environment is God's gift to everyone, and in our use of it we have a responsibility towards the poor, towards future generations and towards humanity as a whole," he wrote.

"If there is a lack of respect for the right to life and to a natural death, if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial ... the conscience of society ends up losing the conception of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology." He called access to food and water "universal human rights."

George Weigel, a conservative Catholic thinker at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., was "very pleased to see Benedict ... stress that the life issues are social justice issues." But he doubted that would have much impact in Washington.

"Catholic politicians who are committed to the abortion license are so lost in confusion and willfulness that they're unlikely to be swayed by an encyclical," he said.

Dr. Weigel found the call for an international authority to enforce social justice "rather incoherent."

"Vatican dreams of a world political authority strike me as very odd in light of the U.N.'s promotion of a population-control agenda," he said.

The document reflects on a 1967 social encyclical of Pope Paul VI. Both concern development, defined as the eradication of poverty, violence, disease and political and spiritual oppression. While global wealth has increased since Pope Paul's day, so has inequality, Pope Benedict wrote. "Profit is useful if it serves as a means towards an end," he wrote.