Alexandre Havard leading a recent “Virtuous Leadership” seminar with CEOs and entrepreneurs in Latvia, one of the most industrialized and wealthy republics of the former Soviet Union The Acton Institute’s Rome office led its recent Campus Martius Seminarwith Alexandre Havard, the Russian-French author of Virtuous Leadership(2007), Created for Greatness: The Power of Magnanimity(2011)and founder of the Moscow- and Washington, D.C.-based Harvard Virtuous Leadership Institute. Havard, speaking with Zenit’s Ed Pentin in an article following the seminar, said that during today’s...

As we reap the benefits of market exchange and observe the many achievements of free trade and globalization, it’s easy to give credit to the market itself, either ignoring or forgetting the munities, and institutions who actively leveragedit for mon good. Capitalism is, after all, a mereframework for human engagement. Although the constraints it imposes (“thou shalt not steal”) and the features it elevates (ownership, stewardship, risk, and sacrifice) may fit well within a broaderChristian context, it says more about...

Anthony Esolen, in an on-going series in Crisis Magazine, ponders Catholic Social Teaching, as presented by Pope Leo XIII. Esolen says that Pope Leo’s rich view of humanity arms us today in not only promoting the free market, but bating the meager thoughts proposed by socialism and liberalism. How does Leo XIII do this? By truly understanding the human person. Human beings are embodied rational souls, and everything they touch they mark with the fire of their spirit, the gift...

Given all the reassessment going on today about conservatism and its popularity and viability for governing, I mend picking up a copy of The High Tide of American Conservatism: Davis, Coolidge, and the 1924 Election by Garland Tucker, III. The author is Chief Executive Officer of Triangle Capital Corporation in Raleigh, N.C. Over the years, I’ve highlighted how Coolidge’s ideas relate to Acton’s thought and mission. And while I’ve read and written a lot about Coolidge, I knew next to...

Poverty, development, and stewardship tend to be topics both of discussion and personal reflection as we are reminded to count our blessings around this time of year. If similar ideas have been on your mind, you may be interested in Globalization, Poverty, and Development, anAU Online lecture series thatexplores the theme of human flourishing and its relation to poverty, globalization, and the Church in the developed world. Join Mr. Brett Elder, a director at Acton Institute and creator of the...

On Nov. 28, the Canada-based Fraser Institute released the eighth edition of its annual report, Economic Freedom of North America 2012, in which the respective economic situation and government regulatory factors present in the states and provinces of North America were gauged. Global studies of economic freedom, such as the Heritage Foundation’s 2012 Index of Economic Freedom and the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World 2012, rank the United States and Canada as two of the most economically free...

Rev. Sirico will be on the Hugh Hewitt Show today at 8:20pm EST to discuss his book, Defending the Free Market. Listen to the show on your local Salem station or live online here. ...

Prof. Giovanni Patriarca, recipient of the Acton Institute’s 2012 Novak Award given recently in Rome at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, was interviewed by RomeReports Television News Agency in a video released Friday. Articulating the main points of his lecture “Against Apathy: Reconstruction of a Cultural Identity,” Patriarca told RomeReports that Western democratic society is abandoning its traditional values and, therefore, its very culture of responsible freedom and creativity. He placed part of the blame of the West’s...

Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, professor of theology at Chicago Theological Seminary believes that Jesus had an economic plan. She’s written a book, #Occupy the Bible: What Jesus Really Said (and Did) About Money and Power, and claims that Jesus came to reverse economic inequality. When Jesus announced his ministry as “good news to the poor” and to “proclaim the Year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4: 18-19), he meant that he wanted his society to have a year when economic inequality...

Perhaps one of the biggest obstacles to wealth creation in the developing world is corruption. Bribery, rigging of the political process, theft, lack of accountability: all of these lead to instability, bureaucracy, and a lack of incentive to invest. The United Nations has declared today International Anti-Corruption Day in an effort to bring light to this topic and work to prevent it. George Ayittey, Ghanaian economist, explains how massive a problem corruption is for Africa: Imagine, Africa has a begging...