VATICAN CITY (CNS) — President Barack Obama’s efforts to tackle the economic crisis drew praise from a Nobel Prize-winning member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. At a Vatican press conference May 6, the president of the academy, U.S. Catholic scholar Mary Ann Glendon, was asked about Obama’s economic strategies in light of Catholic teaching. She avoided specific comments on Obama’s policies.

But the chancellor of the academy, Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, intervened to say that the prize-winning U.S. economist Joseph Stiglitz, an academy member since 2003, had spoken in favor of the U.S. president’s economic moves. Stiglitz believes that, “from the social justice point of view, the approaches that (Obama) is trying to take are positive,” Bishop Sanchez said.

Glendon, who presided over the academy’s May 1-5 plenary assembly at the Vatican, announced that academy members would be addressing the world financial crisis during next year’s meeting. Taking up the topic “The Crisis in the Global Economy,” academy members will focus on “perspectives on the current crisis that tend to be neglected,” said Glendon.