Katie McCloskey, vice president of social responsibility, recently spoke on a panel at a Vatican conference on Mensuram Bonam, a document in support of Catholic-aligned investing.
In November 2023, I joined more than 100 representatives of global Catholic institutions at the first conference responding to Mensuram Bonam (“in good measure”), which calls all Catholic investors to contemplate and deepen their practice of faith-based investing.
Without being proscriptive and recognizing that institutions are in different situations in their responsible investing journey, Mensuram Bonam exhorts all investors to consider the principles of Catholic Social Teaching when making investment decisions and determine how best to “engage, enhance and exclude” within their investment portfolios. The conference gathered orders of women and men religious, dioceses, and Vatican bodies to reflect on these calls and to learn from one another. Participants spoke of their exclusionary screening processes, their impact investing (which the document describes as “enhance”), and the ways they engage their investment managers and the companies in which they invest.
I was struck by the spirit of cooperation present in the gathering, and the desire to learn from each other to find best practices and to create structures for collaboration. The participants sought ways to use one voice to describe the goals of Catholic investors and to use financial resources to live into the calls for response to the “Cry of the Poor” and the “Cry of the Earth” of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’.