Promoting international development is one of HM Government's top priorities.  It is vital to all of the FCO's strategic policy goals: countering terrorism and weapons proliferation, and their causes; preventing and resolving conflict; promoting a low carbon, high growth, global economy; and developing effective international institutions.  The Embassy to the Holy See maintains contact with the Church officials closely and actively involved in this process, reports their aims and successes to the appropriate Government offices in London, keeps the Holy See aware of Britain's objectives and actions, and promotes meetings and correspondence between the most important, senior officials in the two governments to ensure that no opportunity is missed for fruitful cooperation.

In the area of international development, the Holy See is one of the major providers of services through its social services arms in the form of Caritas Internationalis (a federation of 162 Catholic aid agencies, making it one of the world’s largest development bodies in terms of personnel and spend), CIDSE (a federation of 15 international Catholic NGOs) and the many religious orders and dioceses operating schools, hospitals and social services centres, etc.

The Catholic Church is a very big player in grass roots development worldwide, but especially in Africa, where it is responsible for nearly one quarter of health care provision. In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, faith groups are the primary providers of medical and educational infrastructure.  UNAIDS and the WHO are helping the faith groups with a comprehensive mapping programme to determine their capacity on the ground.  As one of the largest providers of education on the African continent, the Church provides places in school to some 12 million children each year. Therefore the Holy See is a crucial partner to the international community if we are to deliver on the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

In recent years we have seen very fruitful areas of UK-Holy See relations.  The International Finance Facility (IFFI) is a novel way to use the capital markets to front load development spending. The then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, came to the Vatican in 2004 to launch the concept, and the late Pope John Paul II gave it his full moral support.  In November 2006, Pope Benedict XVI went one step further and gave it his full practical support.  He sent his representative Cardinal Martino to London to purchase the first IFF-Immunisation Bond on the Pope’s behalf. The Bond raised over US$4 billion.