As cardinals gathered around the world today for an extraordinary consistory it was announced that Pope Benedict XVI would shortly issue the second encyclical of his papacy, on the theme of "Christian hope".

The 81-page letter to be sent to the world’s bishops was written during the summer both at the Pope's retreat in the mountains of northern Italy, Lorenzago di Cadore, and his summer residence at Castelgandolfo. The document will exhort Christians not to be afraid in the face of world upheavals, violence, rapid change and "human dramas" but rather to embrace "hope founded on faith".

The Cardinal Secretary of State, Tarcisio Bertone, said the Pope would sign the document on 30 November, but did not say when the text would be published. It will be the 295th papal encyclical since the first was issued in 1740, and will be entitled "Spe Salvi".

Pope Benedict's first encyclical was issued in January 2006 on charity and divine love, with the title "Deus Caritas Est." He is working on another encyclical on social and economic issues in an age of globalisation, but has decided to release the encyclical on hope first, Vatican sources said.

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Encyclical letters are intended as guidance for the Roman Catholic Church on matters of doctrine, morals or discipline. "Spe Salvi" takes as its text St Paul's Letter to the Romans, 24-25: "For we are saved by hope, but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it."

This morning cardinals from around the world began a debate on issues from Christian unity to defence of the family ahead of a ceremony tomorrow to elevate 23 new "Princes of the Church". Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the pontifical council for Christian unity, addressed the cardinals on the Vatican's relations with Protestants, Anglicans and Orthodox, and gave details of a new document approved by a Vatican-Orthodox theological commission to heal the 1000-year schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

In the document, Catholic and Orthodox representatives agreed that the Pope has primacy over all bishops, but did not come to a common view on what authority that gives him. Cardinal Kasper said the document marked the first time the Orthodox churches had agreed that there was a "universal level" of the church and that the chief primate was the Pope as Bishop of Rome. But he warned that the road ahead to full unity would be "long and difficult".

The document was approved at a meeting in Ravenna last month during which however the Russian Orthodox Church representatives walked out after a dispute with the representatives of the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew I.