Cooperazione internazionale allo sviluppo

International development cooperation, a research topic of current interest for the social sciences, takes different forms from the 1950s to the present. If in the first decades following the Second World War it is conceived as a mere transfer of economic resources from the higher income countries to the more fragile contexts, as the years go by we witness a real paradigm shift that leads it to be identified as an effective tool for the promotion of integral human development and a privileged way for the pursuit of the common good both at the global and local level. This renewed concept of international development cooperation – the subject of this contribution – is shared and promoted by the Catholic Church Magisterium, discovers its roots in the encyclical Populorum progressio by Pope Paul VI and finds a full valorisation in the “outgoing” missionary Church of Pope Francis.