Some in the media are calling it just a statement about “economic justice.” But Pope Benedict XVI’s “Charity in Truth” statement, also known as an encyclical, is a radical document that puts the Roman Catholic Church firmly on the side of an emerging world government.

In explicit and direct language, the Pope calls for a “true world political authority” to manage the affairs of the world. At the same time, however, the Pope also warns that such an international order could “produce a dangerous universal power of a tyrannical nature” and must be guarded against somehow.

The New York Times got it right this time, noting the Pope’s call for a world political authority amounted to endorsement of a New World Economic Order, a long-time goal of the old Soviet-sponsored international communist movement. Bloomberg.com highlighted the Pope’s call for a new world order with “teeth.”

The Pope’s shocking endorsement of a “World Political Authority,” which has prophetic implications for some Christians who fear that a global dictatorship will take power in the “last days” of man’s reign on earth, comes shortly after the United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis issued a call for global taxes and more powerful global institutions. U.N. General Assembly President, Miguel D’Escoto, a Communist Catholic Priest, gave a speech at the event calling on the nations of the world to revere “Mother Earth” but concluded with words from the Pope blessing the conference participants.

The controversial Papal statement comes just before a meeting of the G-8 nations and a scheduled meeting between the Pope and President Obama at the Vatican on July 10.

Sounding like Obama himself, Pope Benedict says this new international order can be accomplished through “reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth.”

The “teeth” may come in adopting the global environmental agenda, which the Pope warmly embraces.

Sounding like Al Gore, the Pope said that one pressing need is “a worldwide redistribution of energy resources, so that countries lacking those resources can have access to them.” He adds that “This responsibility is a global one, for it is concerned not just with energy but with the whole of creation, which must not be bequeathed to future generations depleted of its resources.”

“The Church has a responsibility towards creation and she must assert this responsibility in the public sphere,” he explains.

In a statement that sounds like an endorsement of a new global warming treaty, which will be negotiated at a U.N. conference in December, the Pope says, “The international community has an urgent duty to find institutional means of regulating the exploitation of non-renewable resources, involving poor countries in the process, in order to plan together for the future.”

“The technologically advanced societies can and must lower their domestic energy consumption, either through an evolution in manufacturing methods or through greater ecological sensitivity among their citizens.” he declares.

In terms of how this new “world political authority” should look, the Pope says that it, too, should have “teeth” in the form of “the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties, and also with the coordinated measures adopted in various international forums.” Pope Benedict declares that “such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights.”

But the document, which is more than 30,000 words long, is contradictory in that it pretends that a world government can co-exist with freedom and democracy. For example, the statement calls for “a greater degree of international ordering, marked by subsidiarity, for the management of globalization.” The term “subsidiarity” is usually defined as having matters handled by local authorities, not international bureaucrats.

In another example of double-speak, the Pope declares that “Globalization certainly requires authority, insofar as it poses the problem of a global common good that needs to be pursued. This authority, however, must be organized in a subsidiary and stratified way, if it is not to infringe upon freedom and if it is to yield effective results in practice.”

He doesn’t explain how it will be possible for citizens to influence or control this “world political authority” when they are under its bureaucratic control.

In the statement about how the New World Order could turn into a tyranny, the Pope is also contradictory, declaring that “…the principle of subsidiarity is particularly well-suited to managing globalization and directing it towards authentic human development. In order not to produce a dangerous universal power of a tyrannical nature, the governance of globalization must be marked by subsidiarity, articulated into several layers and involving different levels that can work together.”

Against, he doesn’t explain how people on the local or even national levels will be able to resist this tyranny.

In a strong endorsement of foreign aid, the Pope says that “In the search for solutions to the current economic crisis, development aid for poor countries must be considered a valid means of creating wealth for all.”

But there must be more. He says that “…more economically developed nations should do all they can to allocate larger portions of their gross domestic product to development aid, thus respecting the obligations that the international community has undertaken in this regard.”

This statement seems to be an urgent call for fulfilment of the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals, which involve an estimated $845 billion from the U.S. over a ten-year period.

The Pope goes on to say that the social order should conform to the moral order, but the fact is that on moral issues such as abortion and homosexuality, the agenda of the United Nations is opposed to that of the Catholic Church. Even on capital punishment, there is disagreement. The U.N. opposes it while traditional church teaching (Section 2267 of the Catholic Catechism) allows it in certain cases.

In his statement, the Pope declares that “Some non-governmental Organizations work actively to spread abortion, at times promoting the practice of sterilization in poor countries, in some cases not even informing the women concerned. Moreover, there is reason to suspect that development aid is sometimes linked to specific health-care policies which de facto involve the imposition of strong birth control measures. Further grounds for concern are laws permitting euthanasia as well as pressure from lobby groups, nationally and internationally, in favour of its juridical recognition.”

What he doesn’t mention is that some of these groups operate through and with the support of the United Nations.