Papal Encyclicals

A circular letter from a pope to the bishops, and through them to the faithful, teaching rather than legislating. An encyclical does not create law in the way a bull or a canon does, but it sets the position a tradition of over a billion people is expected to hold, and the ones filed here have shaped labour politics, sexual ethics and environmental argument well outside the church. They are conventionally known by the first two or three words of the Latin text, which is a title and not a summary.