In a message for World Tourism Day, September 27, the Vatican’s Dicastery for Integral Human Development said that tourism “must be carried out according to principles of equity and social transformation.”

The message—signed by Cardinal Michael Czerny, the prefect of the dicastery—said that the tourism industry should encourage respect for the environment as well as for the people involved, promoting social justice and development. Thus “tourism is also called to embrace the perspective of integral ecology.”


The message began with an acknowledgment that tourism has set back severely by the covid crisis—which, the Vatican document said, is not over. However, “it can now become one of the engines of the reconstruction of a more just, sustainable, and integral world.”