In creating new opportunities for work "open and enterprising people, people of fraternal relations, of research and investment in the development of clean energy to resolve the challenges of climate change" are needed, he said, adding that this is concretely possible today.
He said it's also necessary "to get rid of the pressures of public and private lobbyists that defend sectoral interests," and stressed the need to "overcome forms of spiritual laziness."
"It is necessary for political action to be placed truly at the service of the human person, of the common good and of respect for nature."
The explained that the challenge to meet "is to strive with courage to go beyond the prevailing model of social order prevalent today, transforming it from within," such that the market will serve integral human development, as well as the production of wealth.
He also addressed "the rethinking of the figure and the role of the nation-state in a new context which is that of globalization, which has profoundly modified the previous international order," the Pope said, explaining that the state "cannot understand itself as the sole and exclusive holder of the common good by not allowing intermediate bodies of society to express, in freedom, their full potential."
To do this, he added, "would be a violation of the principle of subsidiarity which, combined with solidarity, is a cornerstone of the Church's social doctrine."
The role of society, then, can be summed up with an image used by French poet Charles Peguy, who described the virtue of hope as the "younger sister" in the middle of the other theological virtues: faith and charity.
"Hope then moves, taking them by the hand and pulling them forward. This is how the position of civil society seems to me: 'pulling' the state and the market forward so that they can rethink their reason for being and how they operate."
Elise Harris was senior Rome correspondent for CNA from 2012 to 2018.