In a letter dated 15th July of this year and released to the public one week later, Pope Paul, writing to Cardinal Jean Villot, head of the Vatican Secretariat of State, announced the foundation of a new pontifical body, of which the cardinal would be the first president. To give it its official title, the new agency is the Pontifical Council ‘Cor Unum’ for Promoting Human and Christian Development. Its purpose is to ‘co-ordinate the energies and undertakings of all Catholic organizations’ engaged in emergency relief and development funding.

The project had first been made known beyond the confines of upper-level Secretariat of State circles some seven weeks earlier. From various sources the following sketch of background moves can can be made out. The story seems worth telling in view of one of the major objections that was to be voiced later against the whole project: the unilateral action of the Vatican in a matter that affects the whole Catholic Church, most especially all those persons directly involved in the collection and distribution of relief and development funds.

On 26th May, Cardinal Villot put his signature to approximately 100 copies of a 3-page document. The same day, Archbishop Giovanni Benelli, Under-Secretary of State, summoned a number of persons to see him; among them was Mons. Jean Rodhain, president of Caritas Internationalis. He spoke to them not in a group but one after the other, informing them of the content of Cardinal Villot’s letter.

With all the trappings of cloak-and-dagger international intrigue, Cardinal Villot’s letter was not to be sent to its addressees by mail: a team of envoys fanned out to deliver it in person. They travelled to Austria, Germany, France, Belgium, the United States, and elsewhere. They laid special stress on the confidential nature of the proceedings and the document.