Lebret’s Christian-inspired societal project and integral human development

ABSTRACT In this article, we describe how Louis-Joseph Lebret’s work, propelled by his human-centred spirituality, contributed to the development of an approach aimed at the transformation of social and economic structures, so as to achieve integral human development. We discuss too the connections between Lebret’s legacy and the advancement of Integral Human Development within the Catholic Church. Finally drawing on a relational ontology (and the way it is expressed in the idea of a relational community in Catholic Social Teaching), we address the similarities and differences between the approaches to human development which were adopted in, respectively, the Catholic Church and the United Nations, which is another central institution with which Lebret interacted.