Caroline Chisholm respected the human dignity of all she served and she understood well that human dignity was most easily respected in a society built on principles of justice. She did not limit her concern to the individuals and families she assisted but lobbied government and society to create structures which respected the dignity of the human person. Her concerns with social justice issues such as a family wage; private ownership of family farms; freedom to migrate; were yet to be articulated by the Catholic Church. Her main work unfolded in the 1840s and 1850s. The encyclical Rerum Novarum which marks the beginning of the Church’s social justice teaching for the Modern Age, and deals with such issues, was written by Pope Leo XIII in 1891, fourteen years after Caroline’s death.