Cardinal Bertone Calls for "New Humanism"

(November 26, 2009) Charity, truth and justice are key words in the articulation of a new social and economic humanism, the Vatican secretary of state told the students and professors of the European University of Rome. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone said this Tuesday in his lecture to open the academic year of the university. He used Pope Benedict XVI's most recent encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate," as the reference point of his talk. The cardinal said the encyclical "returns man to the centre of a new humanism, whose values are charity and truth." He said the Pope pointed out charity and truth as "two fundamental realities" that are not "extrinsic to man, much less imposed on him in the name of some ideological vision." Cardinal Bertone noted that in economic humanism, human behaviour "is not inspired by subjectivism, directed to egoism, through hedonist calculations, but by solidarity based on the common good." Cardinal Bertone placed the birth of this economic humanism between the 14th and 15th centuries -- at the centre of an "ample and impetuous European cultural movement" in which "man was rediscovered, leading him again to the centre of the world, that is, to the centre of all moral and spiritual interests." "Europe would not be as we know it today without the Benedictine and Franciscan movement, in which fundamental innovations had their origin, also for that which would later become the market economy," affirmed Cardinal Bertone. He called for a "second humanism" that will provide answers to the current economy marked by "globalization, liberalization, financing, new technologies, global migrations, social inequalities, identity conflicts and environmental risks."