The world authority envisioned by two popes as a way to ensure global peace and justice would be primarily a moral force with limited jurisdiction, Pope Benedict said.

In a Dec. 3 address to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the pope recalled that Blessed John XXIII had called for the “construction of a world community, with a corresponding authority,” to serve the “common good of the human family.”

He also cited his own 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritate, in which he called for a “true world political authority” to ensure international cooperation, peace and environmental protection.

Pope Benedict said the proposed body should not be a “superpower, concentrated in the hands of a few, which would dominate all peoples, exploiting the weakest.”

Rather, it should be “a moral force, a power to influence in accordance with reason.”

Its jurisdiction should be limited by law, he said.