‘Saints have a heart full of justice’ – Thomas Aquinas
The Las Casas Institute for Social Justice is a vibrant centre for research, dialogue, and policymaking on the common good of humanity and nature in the world today, which welcomes discussion with all people of goodwill.
Our work is rooted in Catholic Social Teaching and the example of Bartolomé de Las Casas who argued for the humanity and rights of all peoples in the Americas in the sixteenth century, and is one of the early pioneers of universal human rights.
We are based at Blackfriars Hall which is the Permanent Private Hall run by the Dominican Order of Preachers at the University of Oxford. In the spirit of Oxford and the Dominicans, we embrace critical thinking and different views on the study of social justice in Britain and the world.
Catholic Social Teaching is the great body of doctrine agreed by the Roman Catholic Church which affirms Catholic commitments on contemporary questions of social, economic, political, and ecological justice.
Based in faith and scripture, and on research in economics, sociology, political and ethical theory, modern Catholic Social Teaching is generally understood to have started with Pope Leo XIII’s encylical Rerum Novarum in 1896, which challenged the economic injustice of the modern industrial world.
Since then, Catholic Social Teaching has continued to develop in many Papal Encyclicals and other official publications in addition to the important documents produced by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Two recent encyclicals on Catholic Social Teaching are Pope Francis’ Laudate Si on climate and environment in 2015, and Pope Benedict’s Deus Caritas Est in 2005 on the importance of love in human society.
The sense of justice and truth found in Catholic Social Teaching guides the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics and is often the basis for their engagement with government policies, inter-faith relations, and multilateral organizations like the European Union, the African Union, and the United Nations.
The rich array of Catholic Social Teaching merits academic study in its own right and as part of wider discussions of public policy and international relations in society at large.
Prof Ian Linden, a member of the Las Casas Advisory Board and a Visiting Professor at St M...
Today the Las Casas Institute is launching six short online videos for use in parishes, Si...
For those of you who missed the fascinating discussion on Narnia and the Political Imagina...
The dominant voices in early Western encounters with Buddhism adapted the religion to their own purposes: romanticism, esotericism, an emphasis on scientific religion (at the cost of the history of...
Professor Michael Scott, Senior Dean, Blackfriars Hall, will speak on the role of war and peace in the works of Shakespeare. Prof Scott is an expert on Shakespeare having written...
When Mary Beckett wrote Give Them Stones in 1987, the Troubles novel about conflict in Northern Ireland was already a well-established genre. However, the genre was known primarily for the work of...
On Monday 3rd November, the Oxford Thomistic Institute will be hosting Fr Anton ten Klooster, of Tilburg University, to speak on St Thomas Aquinas on the Beatitudes. The lecture will...
Social justice has often been improved and worsened by new technology, which always creates winners and losers. What does the rapidly advancing field of bio-technology mean for social justice as...
On Tuesday 4th November, the Oxford Thomistic Institute will be hosting Fr Anton ten Klooster, of Tilburg University, who will be delivering a seminar on St Thomas Aquinas on the...
How can we better promote healthy living and ageing inspired by a Catholic approach to health, healthcare, and social life? This conference seeks to answer this vital question by discussing...
Herod and the Racial Conflation of Jews and Muslims in Medieval and Early Modern England The Massacre of the Innocents episode from the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew...
This webinar, in collaboration with the Thomas More Centre for International Relations at CEU Fernando III, will be chaired by Dr Hugo Slim and Professor Carlos Espaliú. All are welcome,...
In 2025, China’s Belt and Road Initiative totaled $124 billion across 150 countries, securing more than 175 construction and investment deals. Last year, India, a country on track to become...
In this online talk Professor Michael J Collins will discuss the America’s Encounter with the Land. Professor Michael Scott will chair. This event is sponsored by the Future of the Humanities Project and...
On Monday 17th November, the Oxford Thomistic Institute will be hosting Sr Catherine Joseph Droste OP, of the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum), to speak on Virtue and...
The economics of health care is often criticised as only focussing on efficiency and budget cuts (these are not the same, of course). This has never been true, and health...
Dr Silvie Jacobi, Visiting Lecturer, King’s College London, is an expert on the intersection between art and place. She will be running a workshop exploring these themes at Blackfriars in...
On Monday 24th November, the Oxford Thomistic Institute will be hosting Fr Reginald Lynch OP, of the Dominican House of Studies (DHS) in Washington DC, to speak on Eucharist and...
In this presentation, I critique transhumanism, which denies any objective account of human nature and flourishing in favour of “morphological freedom” to reshape ourselves in any way one chooses so...