Papal Address to Social Doctrine Group

Papal Address to Social Doctrine Group

"Economic and Financial Paradigms … Must Be Rethought"

VATICAN CITY, JUNE 14, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI gave Saturday upon receiving in audience members of the Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice Foundation, which promotes the social doctrine of the Church.

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Venerable brothers in the episcopate and the priesthood,
Illustrious and dear friends!

Thank you for your visit that you are making on the occasion of your annual meeting. I greet all of you with affection and am grateful to you for what you do, with proven generosity, at the service of the Church. I greet and thank Count Lorenzo Rossi di Montelera, your president, who interpreted your sentiments with refined sensibility, expounding the foundation's activities with broad brush strokes. I also thank those who, in different languages, wanted to present me with an attestation of their common devotion. Your gathering today assumes a significance and particular value in light of the situation that all of humanity is experiencing in this moment.

In effect, the financial crisis that has struck the industrialized nations, the emergent nations and those that are developing, shows in a clear way how the economic and financial paradigms that have been dominant in recent years must be rethought. Your foundation has done well, then, to confront, in the international conference that took place yesterday, the theme of the pursuit and identification of the values and guidelines that the economic world must stick to in order to bring into being a new model of development that is more attentive to the demands of solidarity and more respectful of human dignity.

I am happy to see that you have especially examined the interdependency between institutions, society and the market, beginning -- in accord with the encyclical "Centesimus Annus" of my venerable predecessor John Paul II -- from the reflection according to which the market economy, understood as "an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector" (No. 42), can only be recognized as a way of economic and civil progress if it is oriented to the common good (cf. No. 43). Such a vision, however, must also be accompanied by another reflection according to which freedom in the economic sector must situate itself "within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality," a responsible freedom "the core of which is ethical and religious" (No. 42). This encyclical opportunely affirms that: "The person fully realizes himself in the free gift of self, so too ownership morally justifies itself in the creation, at the proper time and in the proper way, of opportunities for work and human growth for all" (No. 43).

I hope the research developed by your work, inspired by the eternal principles of the Gospel, will elaborate a vision of the modern economy that is respectful of the needy and of the rights of the weak. As you know, my encyclical on the vast theme of economics and labor will soon be published: It will highlight what, for us Christians, are the objectives to be pursued and the values to be promoted and tirelessly defended, with the purpose of realizing a truly free and solidary human coexistence.

I also note with pleasure what you are doing on behalf of the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies, to whose aim, an aim which you share, I attribute great value for an increasingly fruitful interreligious dialogue.

Dear friends, thank you once again for your visit; I assure each of you a remembrance in prayer as I bless you all from my heart.

[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]